The national budget proposal for next year includes an appropriation for a study on the need and level of the next round of salary increases for government officials in 2024 onward, a Cabinet official said.
“The sum is under the budget of Governance Commission for government-owned and -controlled corporations,” Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno told reporters over the weekend
Diokno was referring to Salary Standardization Law 5 (SSL 5) which was budgeted despite tighter fiscal space.
Based on Senate Bill 1219 and House Bill 5712, the proposed date of effectivity or implementation of SSL 5 fourth tranched is on 1 January 2023. On 8 January, then-President Rodrigo Duterte signed this into law.
In 2018, uniformed personnel saw their pay increase by 50 to 100 percent.
Teachers, on the other hand, will see their salaries improve by only a little over P6,000 spread across four years, depending on their salary grade levels.
The SSL dictates the salaries of the entire government bureaucracy.
Duterte said the pay hike will cover not just teachers, but the rest of the government workforce, too.
HB 5712 and SB 1219 sought to distribute the increases for all government workers in four installments over a period of four years (2020 to 2023).