Senator Sonny Angara said on Wednesday the government’s national disaster risk reduction management fund (NDRRMF), known as calamity fund 2023, which the 19th Congress will approve, is roughly at PHP30 billion.

Angara said this calamity fund is larger than the previous years.

“Given the increased frequency and magnitude of recent typhoons, this is appropriate. Certainly, the committee will always be open to changes which may help our people during these difficult times and which will improve the government’s response to these calamities,” he said in a statement.

In a recent statement, Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri said the Senate is currently reviewing and making adjustments to the proposed calamity fund for 2023.

“With the recent earthquake in Abra, and now (super tropical storm) Paeng, we need to strengthen the capacity of the NDRRMC [National Disaster, Risk Reduction and Management Council] and related agencies and local governments,” Zubiri said.

“We need to fix our fragmented disaster management efforts and adopt a whole-of-government approach going forward,” he added.

For this year, the national government approved PHP20.7 billion of calamity funds out of the PHP5.02 trillion 2022 budget wherein PHP5.9 billion was already used under the Duterte administration and there was still PHP14.7 billion left when the Marcos administration came in.

After all the senate budget deliberations for the 2023 budgets of clustered agencies, Angara said the Senate Committee on Finance, which he chairs, is set to file a committee report on the resumption of the regular session next week.

“We aim to file the committee report on the budget (general appropriations act) on Tuesday morning (Nov. 8), and hopefully, to deliver the sponsorship speech in the afternoon,” he said.

The PHP5.268 trillion proposed national budget for 2023 was crafted in support of the Marcos administration’s 8-point Socioeconomic Agenda anchored on the theme, “Agenda for Prosperity: Economic Transformation Towards Inclusivity and Sustainability”, which aims to address the immediate and pressing concerns of all Filipinos, according to Department of Budget and Management Secretary Amenah Pangandaman. (PNA)