Exactly 30 days after her eighth State of the Nation Address (SONA), President Gloria Arroyo submitted to Congress a P1.415 trillion budget proposal for 2009, 15.3% higher than last year's budget.
 
To balance the loss of revenues due to R.A. 9504, which exempts wage earners from paying income tax, the government will improve tax administration policies and collections. Tax efforts are expected to improve in 2008.
 
The government also reduced dependency on non-tax revenues from fee-collecting agencies, Bureau of Treasury income, and privatization proceeds.
 
Roughly 91.8% of the revenues are expected to come from taxes on individual and corporate incomes (P567.8 billion), property (P1.4 billion), domestic goods and services (P408.8 billion), and international trade (P300.9 billion).
 
The 2009 budget was made based on an expected GDP growth between 6.1%-7.1%, an inflation rate between 6.0%-8.0%, the peso-dollar exchange rate between P42-P45, the crude oil price between US$115-US$125 per barrel, and the national government deficit of 0.5%.
 
The allotted budget for the Debt Service Fund-Interest payment is P302.6 billion from last year's P269.8 billion which takes the biggest share of the pie. This is followed by the local government units which will be given P271 billion for 2009, P40 billion higher than this year's budget of P231.7 billion.
 
The share these items are getting from the budget pie has been increasing steadily during the Arroyo administration. 

More on education and infrastructure
 
In the executive branch, the Departments of Education and Public Works and Highway still have the biggest share with P165.941 billion and P119.988 billion respectively. In the 2008 adjusted budget, Deped got P147.2 billion while DPWH received P102.4 billion.

Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya Jr. said, in his remarks on the presentation of the budget to Congress, that DPWH will focus on building roads because these generate jobs and, when finished, spur economic activity. Moreover, the government will invest more for human capital development. (See research for full remarks of the budget secretary.)
 
There are significant increases in the budgets of the Department of Interior and Local Government from P53.4 billion to P61.936 billion, Department of Health from P20.2 billion to P27.8 billion, the Department of National Defense which increased from P51 billion to P56.5, and Department of Agrarian Reform from P2.4 billion to P10.9 billion.

Modernization programs for the AFP stayed at P5 billion and the school building programs budget also stayed at P2 billion.
 
The Department of Transportation and Communications's budget rose from P22.7 billion to P23.5 billion while the budget for the Department of Agriculture barely increased from P3.3 billion to P3.8 billion. But modernization of agriculture and fisheries programs will be given P42.4 billion, more than P10 billion higher than in 2008, while the support to government corporations is at P29.3 billion.
 
The rest of the departments have the following allotted budgets for 2009: Department of Justice (P7.2 billion), Department of Labor and Employment (P6.8 billion), Department of Science and Technology (P5.4 billion), Department of Energy (P4.7 billion), Department of Trade and Industry (P2.7 billion), Department of Tourism (P1.7 billion), and Department of Budget and Management (P849, 929).