ASEANEWS HEADLINE- | MANILA: Bicam set to tackle ‘lean’ 2026 budget
Senate President Vicente Sotto III on September 15, 2025./ STAR / Jesse Bustos
PH Senate approves 2026 budget bill on second reading; P68-B cut from House version | ANC
MANILA, Philippines — The Senate and House of Representatives will convene the bicameral conference committee on Thursday to reconcile their versions of the proposed P6.793-trillion national budget for next year.
Senate President Vicente Sotto III yesterday described the Senate’s version of the General Appropriations Bill (GAB) as a lean budget.
The GAB – approved on second reading last week – is set to be approved on final reading on Tuesday.
The upper chamber heads for a possibly heated debate with the House of Representatives during the upcoming bicam that will start on Thursday at the Centro de Turismo in Intramuros, Manila.
It is during the bicam where senators and House members meet to reconcile their versions of the GAB in the public eye, but it had become merely ceremonial, with fund realignments for their pet projects already done behind closed doors to evade scrutiny.
Speaking to radio dwIZ yesterday, Sotto said there would no longer be a repeat of the closed door “budget insertions” that marred the previous 2025 GAB, slammed by critics as the “most corrupt budget.”
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“We will not allow ‘insertions’ to happen in the bicam. We will not allow members to realign millions and billions of funds,” Sotto said of the bicam, which for the first time will be livestreamed.
Sotto called the Senate’s version of the GAB a lean budget free of discretionary funds previously tucked in the Unprogrammed Appropriations (UA) that are prone to abuse.
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“This budget is very trimmed. Everything is in order,” he said.
One major amendment is the Senate’s removal of P53 billion from the budget of foreign-assisted projects broken down into P34 billion for Department of Transportation and P19 billion for Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).
This was instead realigned to the DPWH budget to restore the five percent reduction of the Construction Materials Price Data.
In total, the Senate removed P68.7 billion from the UA, which are essentially standby funds that can only be tapped with excess government revenue.
It had been used like a “pork barrel” to fund flood control projects, some of which ended up substandard or non-existent due to rampant corruption.
The Senate’s proposed UA amount is at P174.6 billion, below the House GAB level of P243.2 billion.
Senate finance committee chair Sherwin Gatchalian said another “controversial” component in the UA is the “Strengthening Assistance for Government Infrastructure Program” or SAGIP, originally at a “lumpsum” P60 billion that was supposed to fund flood control projects, roads and other infrastructure programs.
Gatchalian said the Senate zeroed the SAGIP item due to potential funds misuse using the UA standby funds.
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UA are portions of the budget that can only be tapped with excess revenue collection and approved loans for foreign assisted projects.
These are basically standby funds for additional spending on pet projects if there are new or excess revenue sources for the government.
Gatchalian said he is hoping the House and Senate would agree in coming up with a reconciled version, or for the House to just adopt the Senate version as the final GAB.
He promised that there would be no more budget padding, done in the past during bicam to provide funds for the livelihood assistance program Ayuda sa Kapos ang Kita Program (AKAP), another congressional pork barrel.
“We will look for a compromise. We would like to avoid a heated debate that would just prolong the discussion and delay the budget,” Gatchalian said in a separate dwIZ interview.
“Our goal is to pass a budget for 2026. We would like to avoid a deadlock. We will try our best to agree with our House counterparts,” he added.
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