Media

Concerns that PhilHealth is taking a financial hit due to the coronavirus has no basis, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said, after data on its COVID-19-related reimbursements was revealed during the Senate debate on the Department of Health’s 2021 budget. Of the state...

With 7 weeks left in the year, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto is pressing DSWD “to act like a Santa Claus on overdrive” and quickly disburse some P80 billion remaining in its 2020 budget, prioritizing victims of the three typhoons which have devastated a wide swath of...

No state university or college should get a budget cut. The amount in the proposed budget should be retained, and will be benchmarked as the floor, meaning it can still be increased. Calls for academic freeze will not be met with a funding brake. The correct response is not to...

Stepped up spending is the best calamity response, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said, “as keeping funds in the treasury is like withholding rice in the bodegas when people are hungry.” Recto said billions in unreleased balances in the 2020 national budget should now...

In a country that sits atop the earthquake corridor and is the doormat to the typhoon alley, it is but inevitable that disasters become macroeconomic assumptions of the national budget. Typhoons, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions do not only rearrange the lay of the land,...

If the DTI-attached Philippine International Trading Corporation (PITC) is the designated COVID-19 vaccine buyer, then it should waive its customary 1 percent to 4 percent service fee. This is not the time to reap a pandemic windfall. When private corporations are waiving fees...

Breaking down next year’s P4.506 trillion national budget on a daily basis reveals “the gravity and the gaps” which the pandemic has wrought upon government spending, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said. “We are budgeting P4.506 trillion next year, of which only P2.717...

Some of the important “mission orders” of newly-appointed Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Debold Sinas are spelled out in the “performance guarantees” that the PNP has attached to its P190.8 billion budget request for 2021, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said....