Opening Statement: Hearing of the Senate Committee on Finance

Opening Statement of Senator Loren Legarda
Hearing of the Senate Committee on Finance
Briefing by the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) on the 2018 National Expenditure Program (NEP)
16 August 2017 | Recto and Laurel Rooms, Senate

Good morning.

The national budget is the financial blueprint of a nation’s course towards economic development and progress. A prudent and judicious national budget will steadily steer our path closer to our development goals in this millennial age. That is why one cannot overemphasize the importance of today’s hearing.

We are pleased to welcome our distinguished resource persons today to give us a panoramic picture of the domestic and global economic landscape that influenced the crafting of this proposed national budget for fiscal year 2018.

Your Committee on Finance, without doubt, will work closely with the country’s economic managers and all our government agencies, and consider our constituents’ many concerns, to ensure that the proposed national budget for next year will continue to be socially inclusive and pro-people, one that addresses our development needs now without compromising the needs of future Filipinos.

On that note, I now wish to welcome our resource persons who will brief us on the macroeconomic parameters used in our national budget for Fiscal Year 2018.