Senator Sonny Angara said the government’s national disaster risk reduction management fund (NDRRMF), known as calamity fund 2023, which the 19th Congress will approve, is roughly at P30 billion.
Angara said this calamity fund is larger than the previous years.
“Given the increased frequency and magnitude of recent typhoons, this is appropriate.”
“Given the increased frequency and magnitude of recent typhoons, this is appropriate. Certainly, the committee will always be open to changes which may help our people during these difficult times and which will improve the government’s response to these calamities,” the veteran legislator said.
In a recent statement, Senate President Migz Zubiri said the Senate is currently reviewing and making adjustments to the proposed calamity fund for 2023.
“With the recent earthquake in Abra, and now (super tropical storm) Paeng, we need to strengthen the capacity of the NDRRMC.”
“With the recent earthquake in Abra, and now (super tropical storm) Paeng, we need to strengthen the capacity of the NDRRMC [National Disaster, Risk Reduction and Management Council] and related agencies and local governments,” Zubiri said.
“We need to fix our fragmented disaster management efforts and adopt a whole-of-government approach going forward,” the Senate President added.
For this year, the national government approved P20.7 billion of calamity funds out of the P5.02 trillion 2022 budget wherein P5.9 billion was already used under the Duterte administration and there was still P14.7 billion left when the Marcos administration came in.
After all the senate budget deliberations for the 2023 budgets of clustered agencies, Angara said the Senate Committee on Finance, which he chairs, is set to file a committee report on the resumption of the regular session.
“We aim to file the committee report on the budget (general appropriations act) on Tuesday morning (Nov. 8), and hopefully, to deliver the sponsorship speech in the afternoon,” the seasoned lawmaker said.
The P5.268 trillion proposed national budget for 2023 was crafted in support of the Marcos administration’s 8-point Socioeconomic Agenda anchored on the theme, “Agenda for Prosperity: Economic Transformation Towards Inclusivity and Sustainability”, which aims to address the immediate and pressing concerns of all Filipinos, according to Department of Budget and Management Secretary Amenah Pangandaman.
