THE Office of the President (OP) will again receive bulk of the confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) under Malacañang’s proposed P6.793 trillion national for 2026.
Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman said the OP will get P4.5 billion, which is almost half of the total P10.77 billion proposed budget for CIF under the 2026 National Expenditure Program (NEP).
Pangandaman said the proposed CIF budget for next year is 11.18 percent lower than what the Executive proposed last year in the NEP, which was P12.1 billion.
The DBM secretary made the disclosure during the Department of Budget and Management’s (DBM) press conference after the ceremonial turnover of the proposed 2026 budget to Speaker Martin Romualdez, Nueva Ecjia Rep. Mika Suansing, who chairs the House Committee on Appropriations; and other House leaders.
Suansing said her panel will thoroughly study the request to ensure that only the agencies that need to be allocated such secret funds will be given the funds.
The OP traditionally receives the lion’s share of the CIF to give the Chief Executive a freehand in dealing with national security issues.
The CIF is a lump sum allocation which has been criticized for not being open to public scrutiny.
The OP’s confidential and intelligence fund is four times bigger than the budget allocated to the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA), which will get P1.4 billion. It is likewise higher than the CIF given to the Department of National Defense, which was allotted P1.8 billion, and the PNP and the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) which will get a total of P2.2 billion.
The Commission on Audit (COA) will receive P10 million, while the Office of the Ombudsman has a proposed P51 million CIF.
For the second consecutive year, the Office of the Vice President (OVP) will not have a single centavo of confidential funds, the alleged misuse of which became the basis for the House of Representatives’ impeachment complaint against Vice President Sara Duterte last February under the 19th Congress.
The budget request for the OVP is at P889 million for 2026. Duterte’s office originally requested for P733 million, which was raised by the DBM to P803.6 million. Additional funding was given after the OVP asked for extra budget for personnel services.
The House impeached Duterte last February based on various allegations, including her alleged misuse of a total of P612.5 million in confidential funds disbursed by both the Department of Education, which she used to head as secretary, and the OVP through the use of dubious recipients such as the now infamous “Mary Jane Piattos.”
Duterte faced seven Articles of Impeachment, which also raised her use of P125 million in just 11 days in December 2022 when she was still education secretary.
The Supreme Court has invalidated the Articles of Impeachment, saying that it violated the one-year-bar rule. The House leadership has already appealed the decision, citing factual errors in the ruling, particularly the High Court’s claim that the impeachment articles were transmitted to the Senate without the House’s plenary approval.
TRANSPARENT PROCESS
At the Senate, senators yesterday afternoon unanimously adopted Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 4 calling for a fully-transparent budget process.
Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, chairperson of the Senate Committee on Finance, said making the budget process fully transparent will give the public a clear picture of how lawmakers pass the proposed national budget in compliance to Section 28, Article II of the 1987 Constitution, which declares that “the State shall adopt and implement a policy of full public disclosure of all its transactions involving public interest.”
Under the concurrent resolution, documents relating to the national budget such as budget preparation, the report of the House Committee on Appropriations on the General Appropriations Bill (GAB); transcripts of budget briefings, public hearings, and technical working group meeting; the Senate finance panel’s report on the GAB, journal records of plenary deliberations, amendments to the GAB approved on third reading by the Senate, the bicameral conference committee report, and joint explanation of the disagreeing votes will all be uploaded in the website of the Senate and House.
A detailed comparative matrix shall be prepared by the Senate Committee on Finance and House Committee on Appropriations and publicly uploaded to the websites of both the Senate and the House so the public will be able to compare the changes or amendments made in the House and Senate-approved versions of the budget bill, and the bicameral conference committee version of the GAB.
“The matrix shall highlight all additions, deletions, modifications, and reallocations of funds, including specific line-item changes, across all programs, activities, and projects,” stated the resolution, adding the documents will be in formats that are “timely, comprehensive, and machine readable.”
The resolution said deliberations to be held by the House and Senate panels, including budget briefings, public hearings, plenary discussions, and bicameral meetings, “shall be available and readily accessible to the public via digital livestreaming.”
House Majority Leader Ferdinand Alexander Marcos said he would not allow a “mangled” version of the proposed national budget for 2026 to pass the House of Representatives.
The presidential son made the statement in response to the statement of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. during his fourth State of the Nation Address (SONA) last month that he was prepared to reject a budget if the final version that will be approved by Congress is not aligned with his priorities in the NEP.
“I will not allow a budget on the floor to pass that is a mutation of the NEP or that (has) become too far off from the NEP. As majority leader I won’t allow that,” the House leader told reporters.
NO AKAP
There was no budget allocated for the Ayuda para sa Kapos ang Kita Program (AKAP) program, the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD) financial assistance program for minimum-wage earners.
“There is no budget for the AKAP of DSWD,” Pangandaman said in Filipino, explaining that “there’s still some AKAP funds left from 2025.”
The P26 billion AKAP allocation in the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) has been a source of controversy as critics have been accusing the House leadership of treating the fund as “pork.”
Last month, Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco accused Speaker Martin Romualdez of “controlling” the release of funds for the various financial assistance program of the Marcos administration, including the Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situations (AICS), Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/Displaced Worker (TUPAD), and Medical Assistance to Indigent Patients (MAIP). – With Raymond Africa
