Marcos may join bicam budget deliberations

MANILA, Philippines — Following public uproar over the 2025 national budget, President Marcos is personally watching over the 2026 budget process and is even ready to sit at the bicameral conference committee to ensure that the outlay is aligned with government priorities and includes only shovel-ready projects, the budget department said yesterday.

In a statement, Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman said as early as January, Marcos already had directives on next year’s budget, which is seen to perform a vital role in achieving economic growth.

“In fact, before the election, he already had instructions. We will sit on that (budget process) until the end,” the budget chief said.

The Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) will meet on May 26 to finalize and announce the budget ceiling, which hinges on the revenue projections from the finance department and the tax and customs bureaus.

So far, government agencies have proposed P11 trillion in funding for their programs next year, a 20 percent increase from the P9 trillion originally proposed for 2025.

This year’s P6.326-trillion national budget stirred controversy after Marcos disclosed that lawmakers had made several changes in the funding requests of various agencies.

The President vetoed P194 billion worth of items in the 2025 budget approved by Congress, saying they were not included in the priorities of his administration.

More than 170 public works projects worth P26 billion and 15 unprogrammed appropriations worth P168.24 billion were scrapped from the outlay, which was described by the President as “suboptimal.”

Earlier this year, House Speaker Martin Romualdez and several other lawmakers faced graft complaints over alleged irregularities in the 2025 national budget.

According to the budget department, the target spending level for fiscal year 2026 is based on the government’s medium-term fiscal framework, which estimates a budget of almost P7 trillion. Once the budget ceiling and proposed programs are finalized, economic managers will meet with Marcos to review key projects, especially those under the administration’s priority agenda.

Pangandaman noted that the budget process uses the budget department’s two-tier budgeting approach. The first tier covers regular expenses, such as salaries or personnel services, operating costs and ongoing capital projects, while the second tier includes big or new projects that agencies are requesting additional funds for.

“Some of the projects are not yet ready. It would be difficult to fund those that are not yet shovel-ready... we will look at the utilization rate,” she added.