'OVP won't be crippled despite budget cut'

HOUSE Senior Deputy Speaker and Pampanga 3rd District Rep. Aurelio "Dong" Gonzales Jr. said on Tuesday that the Office of the Vice President (OVP) "will not be crippled" despite the House of Representatives' decision to reduce its budget to P733 million. Gonzales Jr. said that this amount was bigger than most of the budgets the OVP had during the term of former vice president Maria Leonor "Leni" Robredo. "The Office of the Vice President (OVP) led by VP Duterte will not be crippled despite the decision of the House to reduce her 2025 funding. The Vice President will have sufficient funds to discharge her constitutional duties," he said in a statement. The House had approved the recommendation of the House Committee on Appropriations to reduce the OVP's 2025 budget to P733 million from P2.03 billion. The OVP had a budget of P2.34 billion in 2023. Gonzales said that the OVP's budget for 2024 was P1.87 billion. In 2019, he said, the OVP during Robredo's third year in office had a budget of P663.4 million. It had a budget of P699.9 million in 2020, P900 million in 2021 and P702 million in 2022. The OVP had a budget of P500 million in 2016. "Clearly, VP Sara enjoyed much bigger budgets [than] what VP Leni had," Gonzales said. The House Committee on Appropriations unanimously voted to cut the OVP's budget for 2025 to P733 million from the said amount largely because of "redundant social programs and overextended offices," according to a statement issued on Sept. 12, 2024. The House approved the General Appropriations Bill for 2025 on Sept. 25, 2024.