The city government’s proposed P3.8 billion budget for 2020 was approved by the City Council on its third and final reading Monday.
In an interview, Wednesday, Councilor Victor Oliveros, chair of the City Council’s appropriations committee, told Palawan Daily News (PDN) that around 80 percent of the total budget will come from the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) share of the city, while about 20 percent will come from its local revenues.
“The leadership is really working hard looking for every possible means that we can resort to, so that the local income or revenue would be better in terms of infrastructure, policies, building up new better places to go in terms of tourism. We are also planning of exploring different activities to boost tourism…,” said Oliveros.
Oliveros said this P3,786,206,613 budget for next year is divided into four categories namely the personnel services, economic services, social services, and other services.
He said the increase in the general fund compared to this year’s P3.3 billion is mostly because of the yearly upward trend in the IRA shares of the local government of Puerto Princesa.
“Mas malaki ‘yong bulk ng IRA. So ang ginagawa natin ngayon is ‘yong policy direction, ‘yong trust, lalo na ng ating city mayor, is to make everything possible first of all [for] conducive investment, secondly to show na ‘yong administration is a commodity of investment in terms of infrastructure, services, everything that can be done na will boost the investment,” said Oliveros.
Oliveros said this annual increase in the general fund is not just a means to cope with the inflation but is largely attributed to the upward trend of the people’s income and the growing population with each passing year.
He added this continuous growth of the population along with the economic development will result to increase in taxes leading to higher expected budget for every local government unit (LGU).
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