SENATOR Imee Marcos and Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon on Monday expressed concern over the reductions in the proposed budgets of the Philippine Science High School and Food and Nutrition Research Institute.

During the hybrid marathon session on the proposed budget of the Department of Science and Technology, Marcos deplored  the P87 million cut in the PSHS budget and the P321 million cut in the budget of the FNRI at a time when the country has problems with the supply chain and logistics and the threats to national food security.

”We recommend that we take a look once again at the projects that will be severely impacted in the food and nutrition research so direly needed in this time,” Marcos said.

“There is also a significant budget cut for the Philippine Science High School, which as we know, is the home of the best and the brightest Filipino students. I am deeply concerned by the threat it poses against the scholarship of our brilliant but impoverished PSHS students,” she added.

Drilon asked why the DOST budget was reduced by P1.12 billion from P24.916 billion in 2021 to P23.793 billion for next year.

He said the reductions were from agencies involved in research and development.

“This is a little bit worrisome. I would like to suggest to the good vice chairman of the finance committee to give this a good review and if merited, we should restore it. We appeal to our colleagues to take a good look at the budget of this whole agency,” Drilon said adding that the National Task Force to End Local Armed Conflict has a budget of P30 billion which is higher than what was allotted to DOST.

Senator Joel Villanueva agreed to look into these budget cuts.