BAGUIO CITY – The City has set its tentative budget estimate for the year 2016 at P1,548,579,000.
This was bared during the budget forum conducted last Tuesday by the city budget office under budget officer Leticia Clemente.
The forum serves as the takeoff activity in the budget preparation following Mayor Mauricio Domogan’s issuance of the budget call last week.
Representatives of the civil society organizations were invited to participate in the forum which was also attended by city department heads and personnel.
Assistant city treasurer Alex Cabarrubias presented the budget estimate based on tentative income projections by the city treasury office under Alicia Onoza on local and external sources of income.
Based on the projections, the income from the local sources which include tax and non-tax revenues, service/user charges, business and other incomes was estimated at P922,079,000 and the income from external sources or the Internal Revenue Allotment was pegged at P626,500,000. The said estimates will still be finalized by the local finance committee.
During the forum, the participants inputted suggestions on improving the objectives and targets for the year which remain based on the thrusts of Domogan’s administration namely green governance, revenue generation, land use management, education, tourism, social development and health services.
City planning and development officer Evelyn Cayat presented the said thrusts while Clemente discussed the budget preparation guidelines, ceilings and strategies.
In his budget call, the mayor named six bases as framework for the 2016 budget including the adoption of the bottom-up budgeting to ensure involvement of the CSOs, use of the Public Financial Management Assessment Tool (PFMAT) to evaluate the effectiveness of programs and observance of performance based budgeting through the establishment of clear target for all the plans, programs and activities (PPAs).
The LFC is set to finalize the budget estimates from Sept. 28 to Oct. 9. The mayor is expected to approve it by Oct. 10 before its submission to the city council for deliberation./A Refuerzo
