The Bacolod Sangguniang Panlungsod approved the P3.250 billion budget of Bacolod City for 2022 on third and final reading on Wednesday, November 10, Councilor Cindy Rojas, SP Committee on Finance chair, said.
The budget was approved unanimously with no revisions, she said.
The proposed P3.250 billion budget is 25 percent higher than this year’s Bacolod budget of P2.6 billion.
Rojas attributed the budget increase to the National Tax Allotment (NTA), formerly the Internal Revenue Allotment, granted following the Supreme Court’s Mandanas ruling that raised the local government’s share of national taxes.
Rojas said P2,156,905,199 or 66 percent of Bacolod’s 2022 budget will come from the NTA and P1,093,094,801 or 34 percent will come from local revenues.
Vice Governor Jeffrey Ferrer said he is confident that the Negros Occidental Sangguniang Panlalawigan will also approve the P5.7 billion budget of the provincial government on third and final reading reading during its regular session on Tuesday, November 16.
They need to conduct a hearing on the budget of one more department this week, Ferrer said.
The P5,719,337,346 budget will be sourced from local revenues totaling P329,000,000 and P5,390,337,346 from the NTA.*