Pangasinan okays P5.73 billion budget for 2024

By Gabriel L. Cardinoza

LINGAYEN, Pangasinan -- Vice Gov. Mark Ronald Lambino announced here on Monday, Oct. 23, the provincial government's budget for 2024 will be P5.73 billion, about P400 million higher than the P5.3 billion budget in 2023.
    "We attribute the increase of the budget for the 6 percent increase of our national tax allocation and the higher projected locally-generated income of the province next year," said Lambino in a press briefing at the provincial capitol here.
    He said that only about 33 percent of the budget will be allocated as salaries to provincial government workers, which is still way below the 45 percent limit set by law.
    Gov. Ramon Guico 3rd thanked Lambino and the provincial board members for the "record-breaking" approval of the annual budget.
    "Because we communicated early on, we talked often to explain to them the items in the budget, the approval was fast," said Guico during the flag-raising ceremony last Monday.
    Lambino confirmed that the budget approval in the provincial board's plenary session was fast.
    But he said that the budget process actually began in July, when the different offices of the provincial government submitted their budget proposals to the finance committee.
    After a series of meetings and deliberations, the finance committee submitted the proposed annual budget to the provincial board on October 12, three days before the deadline set by the Local Government Code.

    The proposed budget then went through a series of hearings in the provincial board's committee on appropriations. After its approval in the committee level, it was elevated to the plenary, where it was unanimously approved.
    Lambino said that during the budget hearing, the deliberation on the budgets of the provincial government-run hospitals took one day.
    This is because next year will be the second year of the implementation of the reorganization of the hospitals when its overall supervision was transferred from the Provincial Health Office to the newly created Hospital Management Services Office headed by Dr. Dalvie Casilang.
    The province runs six district hospitals, seven community hospitals and one provincial hospital.
Lambino said that most of their questions centered on the changes in the hospitals, services, infrastructure, and handling of patients.
    "I'd like to think that they were satisfied with the answers, especially when they presented the plans for 2024, which will include an even stronger social services program under the MAIP (medical assistance for indigent patients)," Lambino said.
    He said that the hospitals will soon operate their newly-acquired equipment, such as the ultrasound and X-ray machines for all the hospitals, CT scans for district hospitals, and an MRI machine for the provincial hospital.
    Last year, Pangasinan earned some P6.44 billion in revenue, making it the country's seventh top-earning province.
    Its total revenue collection in 2022 was P1.31 billion higher than the P5.13 billion that the province earned in 2021, according to the Commission on Audit's (CoA) 2022 Annual Audit Report.
    The bulk of the province's revenue came from its internal collections share amounting to P5.48 billion, which is also P1.31 billion higher than its P4.17 billion share in 2021.
    Other income sources were tax revenue, where the amount of P453.58 million was collected, and service and business income, which posted some P341.72 million. The tax revenue collection in 2022 increased by P12.67 million, while the service and business income revenue collection was higher by P46.99 million than the collection in 2021.