DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 9 Sept) – The City Council committee on finance, ways, and means is giving a tentative deadline of October 15 to City Hall so that the latter’s budget for the city government for 2015 could be approved before the year ends.
Speaking at Monday’s Kapehan sa SM, finance committee chair Danilo Dayanghirang said the date would give the committee enough time to conduct hearings with the different departments for the budget for next year.
“My timeframe for the entire thing is one month,” Dayanghirang said, referring to the period of committee hearings.
Dayanghirang said the committee would start working on the budget as early as October 16.
“By November 15, we will be ready to prepare the committee report for the 2015 budget,” he said.
He added that the schedule for the processing for the second reading for the budget would be November 15 to the first week of December, including the amount necessary for Supplemental Budget No. 2 (SB2).
SB2 contains the bonuses for the government employees for this year, he said.
Asked about the projection for the 2015 budget, Dayanghirang said the Department of Budget and Management has already certified that there was an increase of P400 million for the city’s internal revenue allotment.
The 2014 budget amounted to P5.1 billion, which could amount to around P5.3 billion for 2015, he said.
“The IRA excludes collections from local sources,” Dayanghirang added, citing business and real property taxes.
The P400 million increase represents a 14 percent increase for the city’s IRA for next year.
He said that local taxes should also increase between 10 and 14 percent. “We will have to see the report from the City Treasurer’s Office.”
Asked how the CTO was faring in terms of collections, Dayanghirang said that they had a problem regarding the documents last year, June 2013, when the council began its work.
For 2014, Dayanghirang said the amount for real property taxes collected by the CTO for 2013 was collected in just three months of 2014. “The CTO is shaping up and doing well this year. But then again, all of this is depending on the budget that will be presented to us,” he said.
