Wednesday, August 3, 2016
by Eugene Adiong
A local business leader in Negros remains optimistic that the proposed budget for the Negros Island Region (NIR) will be approved.
Frank Carbon, governor for Western Visayas and NIR of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, yesterday said the 2016 budgets for national agencies now in NIR is still being sourced from Regions 6 and 7.
“For 2017, separate budget for the newly-created region has been submitted. It is a budget for personnel, operating expenses, capital expenditures and others,” Carbon pointed out adding that “some of the proposed budgets are still with the regional or national offices.”
“We are very hopeful that the national agencies here in NIR will have their own budgets for 2017,” he said.
Carbon said all these reports of the budget for NIR being put on hold “are just ideas being floated by people in Manila.”
“It is not final yet,” he said, “but there are others who believe that the government will stick with the NIR so there will be easy transition to a federal government.”
“Can you imagine one island that belongs to two separate federal states?” Carbon said.
“It doesn’t make sense. They should not toy with the idea of breaking up again the NIR. Right now, it is easy for the two provinces to talk about development of the whole island unlike before,” he added.
“If it ain’t broken, why fix it,” Carbon said.
After seeing a DBM report showing no allocation for NIR, the Sangguniang Panlalawigan of Negros Occidental asked President Rodrigo Duterte to include the island region’s proposed budget as a separate item in the 2017 budget.
Former Negros Occidental Governor Rafael Coscolluela appealed to the Duterte administration to reconsider the move.
Coscolluela lamented the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) did not discuss the matter with the NIR Regional Development Council.
“That does not speak well of a government that is consultative,” said Coscolluela, who pushed for the creation of the island region.*
