Nearly 2 million government workers are expected to benefit from unprogrammed appropriations funded by idle and unused funds from government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs). A total of P67.6 billion will cover salary increases and benefits for the country’s civil servants.
The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) revealed that priority programs receiving funding from the 2024 unprogrammed appropriations include personnel benefits and Salary Standardization Law (SSL) VI.
Of the total amount, P40 billion will be allocated for salary increases for 1,820,610 government employees. The DBM announced earlier that the first part of the four-tranche salary increase for national government employees would start this year, retroactively from January 2024. This will be followed by yearly salary adjustments starting January 2025 until January 2027.
Under the first tranche, the average salary increase for all salary grade levels (SG 1 to SG 31) will be 4.41 percent. The proposed rate of increase under SSL VI will be slightly higher than SSL V.
Meanwhile, P27.6 billion will be used to cover government personnel benefits, including compensation adjustments, staffing modifications, and the grant of Performance-Based Bonus for personnel of national government agencies.
Among the GOCCs with excess funds that will be tapped for unprogrammed appropriations are the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp., with P117 billion; and the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) with P89.9 billion.
PhilHealth earlier remitted P20 billion in May, funds that were allocated for the 27.7 billion in emergency benefits and allowances of COVID frontliners. PhilHealth remitted an additional P10 billion to the national government on Wednesday.
