A Visayas lawmaker has raised concerns on the relatively low budgets allocated to Regions 6, 7, and 8, despite it having the same percentage of voting population as Mindanao, as well as being the places where President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. has “won handily".

In particular, House Committee on Appropriations Vice Chairperson and Aklan 2nd district Rep. Teodorico Haresco Jr. pointed out that his province “delivered votes astoundingly for the incumbent President".

He asked this question as Congress began its deliberations on the 2023 national budget on Friday, Aug. 27, after the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) submitted the proposed National Expenditure Program (NEP).

“I am respectfully questioning the economic and financial assumptions predicating the NEP. I would like to understand why Visayas has disproportionately been allocated a measly 8.3 percent of the regionalized budget or only P437.6 billion compared to other regional counterparts,” Haresco said.

Under the proposed NEP, the Regions 6, 7 and 8 will only get 8.3 percent of the P3.01-trillion regionalized budget compared to the National Capital Region’s 18.8 percent, Luzon’s 18.1 percent, and Mindanao’s 11.9 percent.

The veteran legislator noted that Visayas, which has around 21 percent of the voting population, is only getting about one-third of the budget of Mindanao whose voting population is 23 percent, almost the same as Visayas.

READ: ‘Ball is now in our hands’: House panel commences 2023 budget hearings

“Definitely, Visayas has almost the same population and multiplier effect as Mindanao for every public investment peso,” Haresco added.

The lawmaker even lamented that the region helped deliver the President’s historic 31 million votes.

He called the attention of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) and asked if the proposed budget for Visayas was reflective of the overall purchasing power of Filipinos.

“It is important to know how we defend our peso: is the purchasing power of every Filipino family who are buying less goods and are suffering transport cost increase, for the same wage or salary, still enough?” Haresco asked the DBCC panel.

The DBCC, composed of the DBM, NEDA, the Department of Finance (DOF), Office of the President (OP), and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), is the primary government body tasked to primarily review and approve the macroeconomic targets, revenue projections, borrowing level, aggregate budget level and expenditure priorities.

DBCC further recommends to the Cabinet and the President of the consolidated public sector financial position and the national government fiscal program.