House okays 2026 budget, cuts OVP allocation

The House of Representatives on Monday approved the proposed P6.793-trillion national budget for 2026, retaining the P156-million cut to Vice President Sara Duterte’s office and excluding the P249-billion funding for the contentious unprogrammed appropriations (UA).

House Bill 4058 was passed on third and final reading with 287 affirmative votes, 12 against, and two abstentions, namely, Pwersa ng Pilipinong Pandagat Rep. Harold Duterte and Dasmariñas Rep. Kiko Barzaga.

The Marcos administration’s proposed 2026 budget is 7.4 percent higher than this year’s P6.326 trillion and is projected to be the largest budget ever approved by Congress.

The House moved to cut the OVP’s proposed P889-million budget for next year after Duterte repeatedly skipped plenary hearings on her office’s funding, reducing it to P733 million — matching its current allocation.

This is the second consecutive year the House has cut the OVP’s budget after Duterte’s ties with her former ally, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., soured.

The funding slash, however, is not yet final unless the Senate adopts the House’s recommendation.

Duterte drew a sharp rebuke from the minority after deliberately skipping the plenary deliberations three times unless the House complied with her conditions.

Those conditions included summoning Marcos to appear in the House to defend his office’s budget, and to lift the immigration lookout bulletin orders against seven of her staff members after the House committee on good government and accountability investigated her controversial confidential funds.

Mamamayang Liberal Rep. Leila de Lima, who moved to trim the OVP’s budget, slammed Duterte’s actions towards the House as a “blatant disrespect.” She lauded the House appropriations panel for adopting her proposal notwithstanding strong objections from Duterte’s allies.

UA to retain, or nah?

As for the highly criticized UA, derided by critics as a conduit for corruption, the House-approved budget bill excluded its funding, totaling P249 billion, from the 2026 budget.

House Appropriations Committee Chair Mikaela Suansing said projects under the UA will only be funded if the government has surplus revenue in 2026.

Otherwise, she said, the UA will not receive any allocation, as Congress aims to prevent the further misuse of standby funds.

“I want to emphasize that there are no flood control projects, no bridges, or no roads that can be charged from the unprogrammed appropriations for 2026,” Suansing said in her speech.

The UA has grown unprecedentedly since 2023 — Marcos’ first full year in office — reaching nearly P2 trillion, although P168.2 billion was reportedly vetoed in the 2025 General Appropriations Act.

The UA consists of standby funds that can only be used when the government collects excess revenue or receives grants and foreign aid.

Typically, the UA is tapped for emergencies or to fund infrastructure projects, social aid programs, and other urgent needs.

The UA has been a point of contention among lawmakers, with the minority accusing it of being a channel for corruption, as made evident by the flood control scandal.

In 2023 and 2024, a staggering P141 billion was charged to the UA to finance flood control projects, now at the center of a corruption probe involving members of Congress, DPWH officials, and private contractors.

Amid mounting petitions from the opposition to scrap the UA, Suansing said the House majority had already compromised and removed P35 billion worth of infrastructure projects from the formerly Strengthening Assistance for Government Infrastructure and Social Programs (SAGIP), which will be sourced to the UA.

Under the proposed 2026 budget, the UA was allocated P249.9 billion, with significant portions earmarked for foreign-assisted projects (P97.3 billion) and SAGIP (P80.9 billion).

Minority lawmakers, however, argued that defunding SAGIP’s infrastructure budget is pointless if the allocation is simply shifted to the foreign-assisted projects (FAP), which also primarily funds infrastructure projects.

Suansing, on the other hand, countered that defunding the FAP is not an option because “we cannot abandon our agreements at the international level.”

She noted that only social programs focused on education, health, and social pensions can be funded from the UA.

Despite this, minority lawmakers, such as De Lima, Edgar Erice, Chel Diokno, Peri Cendaña and Antonio Tinio, among others, contended that scrapping the UA from the 2026 GAB was necessary to ensure that the following year’s budget would not be prone to corruption.

P255 billion for flood control realigned

Under the House-approved bill, the lion’s share of P255 billion intended to bankroll the corruption-plagued flood control projects was reallocated to education, health, and agriculture, receiving P56.6 billion, P90.7 billion, and P53.7 billion, respectively.

The realignment pushes the education sector’s budget from P1.22 trillion to P1.28 trillion — the “highest budget for education in history.”

The health sector’s bdget rose from P320.5 billion to P411.2 billion, with P60 billion added to the P113 billion in subsidies for state insurer PhilHealth, which received no funding in this year’s budget.

Approximately P49.1 billion, meanwhile, will be added to the Department of Health’s Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients to ensure that the zero balance billing for government hospitals will materialize.

Meanwhile, the budget for agriculture was bloated to P292.9 billion. Of this, P10 billion will go to help 1.43 million farmers and fisherfolk.

The bulk of the budget, P74.5 billion, will go toward building and rehabilitating farm-to-market roads and irrigation systems, while P30 billion is earmarked for farm mechanization, machinery, and inputs under the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund.