The inclusion of the budget for the Negros Island Region, if it will be restored initially through the issuance of an executive order (EO), is expected to be included in the 2023 General Appropriations Act, Provincial Administrator, Atty. Rayfrando Diaz, said Monday, June 27.
Diaz said an EO creating NIR had been issued before, so there’s already a blueprint.
“I think we’ll just have to revive it and use the same formula. It has already been done,” Diaz added.
Bacolod City Mayor-Elect Alfredo Benitez and sibling, Rep. Jose Francisco Benitez (3rd District, Negros Occ.) said earlier that the issuance of an executive order creating NIR, before its passage into a law, is now being worked out by the Executive Department.
Mayor-elect Benitez said that both Interior and Local Government Secretary Benhur Abalos and president-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr. are supportive of the NIR creation.
Benitez, who personally knows the incoming Philippine president, is optimistic that the EO for the NIR creation will be signed.
Diaz expects that the NIR will have a budget allocation in the 2023 GAA, if there is already an EO for its creation.
Rep. Benitez said that all 11 Negros solons, including seven from Negros Occidental, as well as Abang Lingkod party-list Rep. Stephen Joseph Paduano, three in Negros Oriental, and Siquijor Rep. Zaldy Villa will jointly file on July 1 a bill creating the NIR.
“I think it will really gain fast action inside the House of Representatives,” Diaz said.
He added that it is a very strategic move to have an EO first, in order that NIR the budget will be included in the 2023 GAA.
The NIR, which was created through an executive order in 2015, was dissolved by President Rodrigo Duterte in 2017./GB
