In his budget message, Governor George Arnaiz explained that the 2007 budget focused more on giving majority of the province's population more access to basic needs and services, providing job opportunities to urban poor residents, ensuring equal distribution of wealth.
For this reason, the governor said, Capitol allotted the biggest share of P311 million for economic services covering agriculture, veterinary, and operation and maintenance of the engineering office.
The next bigger allocation of P306 million goes to health, nutrition, and population services.
Arnaiz said the outlay will fund the operation of the provincial hospitals, the six district hospitals, the diagnostic center, Talay Rehabilitation Center, and the community hospitals as well as nutrition and the PhilHealth indigence program.
General public services was allotted almost P143 million for the Provincial Government's program to promote public safety and order.
The annual budget allocates a reserve fund of almost P41 million for anti-calamity programs and P22 million to pay its loans particularly with the Development Bank of the Philippines.
The loans are being used for the ongoing projects of the Provincial Government including the construction of the Oriental Negros Convention Center.
Second to lowest priority of the proposed budget is for social sector and welfare, which gets more than P17 million for the delivery of social services and welfare for the marginalized sector of the society.
The aid to barangays totals P556,000.
Arnaiz said 79.29 percent or P667 million of the proposed budget comes from the Internal Revenue Allotment and the rest are from the province's local collections.
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