Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri said Thursday that the Senate expects to begin the plenary debates on the P 5.3 trillion national budget for 2023 on November 7.

At a press briefing, Zubiri said the Senate is “on track” to approve the General Appropriations bill (GAB) by the end of November since they have submitted the budget allocations for several government agencies for plenary deliberations.

“Right now, we are on break but committee hearings are ongoing. What Senator (Juan Edgardo) Angara wants is that by next week, all the committee hearings for all these agencies will be finished so that it would move toward the plenary,” Zubiri told reporters.

“What we are planning is that by November 7, when we return, or the week after we are going to proceed with plenary debates. We will have at least two weeks for that. With of course,the usual suspend session. Then we will have hearings from morning until evening. We will have 12-hour, 13-hour days until we finish the budget. So we’re looking at third or maximum, fourth week approval on third reading,” he added.

Congress went on from October 1 to November 6.

Zubiri said: “We hope that by the end of November, we will already be able to approve (the General Appropriations bill) on second and third reading.”

According to Zubiri, the Senate expects the approval and ratification of the bicameral conference committee report to be done by the first week of December.

“We’re looking at best efforts, first week of December, bicam approval. At the latest, the bicam approval and ratification would be in the second week,” he said.

The House on September 28 approved their version of the measure. Jaspearl Tan/DMS