Statement on the 2026 General Appropriations Act

05 January 2026 – The 2026 General Appropriations Act, signed today by the President, represents an improvement compared to the budgets of the last few years, to wit:


1. The Education budget, at 4.36% of GDP, now meets the global benchmark of 4%. Utilization has been a major bottleneck in the past, but better management can potentially overcome this. 

2. The agriculture sector, which is an advocacy of the Makati Business Club, saw its budget raised to P214.39-billion, which is, apparently, the highest allocation for the sector in more than a decade.

3. The return of Philhealth and Project NOAH funding. Project NOAH should result in a more formal master plan for flood control, and other climate responsive infrastructure, including nature-based solutions. In line with this, we support the proposal to create a cabinet-level ‘Department of Water’ to manage this issue.

4. The gains in transparency of the budget process itself are important. Without access to the data, we could not have identified the risks and red flags.

However, we believe the President should have taken a more aggressive action on constitutionally questionable Unprogrammed Allocations, because we believe they could be subject to discretionary disbursement, i.e. patronage. Many of these are social welfare programs, falling under the heading of ‘ayuda’, which we classify as “soft pork.”

The President has promised that politicians will not be allowed to intervene in the allocation of ‘ayuda’ funds, but more than a verbal reassurance, we are requesting an Executive Order to create rights-based and rules-based mechanisms to govern the disbursement of ayuda funds, and to strictly limit confidential and intelligence funds to legitimate security uses.

The People’s Budget Coalition, composed of MBC, other business groups, the Roundtable For Inclusive Development, the Catholic Bishops’ Congress of the Philippines, and academe, closely monitored the formulation of the 2026 General Appropriations Act. We worked with progressive members of the Senate and House of Representatives, as well as key Cabinet members. On December 29, we sent an open letter to the President, where we red-flagged P633 billion in line items that we considered “risky”, or vulnerable to plunder.

The coalition recommended that the President:


1. Veto “shadow pork” in the form of unprogrammed appropriations, worth P243 billion;

2. Issue an executive order to establish rules-based and rights-based guidelines for another P210 billion in ayuda programs, confidential and intelligence funds, and put some of these projects under “conditional implementation” and “later release”;

3. Cut the fat in “hard pork” (infrastructure) by focusing audit and citizen monitoring on P180 billion worth of projects at risk of being repeat or overpriced projects;

4. Issue an executive order for a science-based (i.e. Project Noah) and nature-based update of DPWH manuals that influence around P600 billion in infrastructure projects.

The President has vetoed P92.5 billion of the unprogrammed appropriations. We acknowledge that this shows that the President is responsive to feedback from the private sector. The President further assured that the funds’ utilization is provided with safeguards and is only available when clearly defined triggers and tests are met and will be released only after careful validation.

Some of the legislators also insist that there are already sufficient safeguards against soft pork in the GAA. These safeguards are yet untested, and experience has shown that patronage will find a way. The implementation phase will be critical.

More transparency is needed. The “Sumbong Sa Pangulo” platform, for example, only provided half the picture on plunder in flood control projects. Hundreds of billions of pesos worth of these projects were not on the platform. The public needs access to the full PhilGEPS (government procurement system) data set, for complete scrutiny.

To summarize, the 2026 General Appropriations Act is an improved budget compared to those of the previous years, both in terms of allocation focus, and in the improved process transparency.
Information and transparency are necessary in the fight against corruption. But the real antidote will come from a truly engaged citizenry. The Makati Business Club, together with other members of the People’s Budget Coalition, commit to continue our active participation in the budget and implementation monitoring process.