Rody's final year saw rise in unprogrammed funds

The allocation for the unprogrammed appropriations (UA), which has become a point of contention between administration lawmakers and the opposition, began to swell in 2022—the last year of former president Rodrigo Duterte in office.

Although the UA was not alien to the budgetary process, Akbayan Rep. Chel Diokno said it drew suspicions when it bloated in 2022.

“Prior to 2022, there were already unprogrammed appropriations in the NEP (National Expenditure Program), but this was never touched by Congress,” Diokno said in an interview. “But beginning in 2022, you saw big increases, and in 2025, what we saw were these increases came from the bicam. These were what we called now insertions.”

The P5.024-trillion national budget for 2022 was the last spending plan prepared by the Duterte administration before he stepped down from office to pave the way for his successor, President Marcos Jr., in June.

A review of previous budgets will reveal that the UA, which has been derided by minority lawmakers as a conduit for corruption, only “ballooned” in 2022, according to Diokno.

Since then, the allocation for the UA has reached unprecedented levels after Marcos took over, hitting nearly P2 trillion. Although Bataan Rep. Albert Garcia earlier claimed that, of the total, P168.2 billion was vetoed in the 2025 General Appropriations Act.

This year’s budget, mocked as the “most corrupt” ever passed by Congress, allegedly features padded UA, in which the flood control projects—now at the center of a corruption probe involving members of Congress, DPWH officials, and private contractors—were charged.

Opposition lawmakers in the House vigorously protested to scrap the UA in the 2026 proposed budget, but the House passed the GAB on Monday, rejecting their proposal.

The contentious UA has a whopping P243 billion allocation for next year, though House Committee on Appropriations Chair Mikaela Suansing said the projects and programs that will be charged to it will only be funded if the government has extra revenue in 2026.

The UA consists of standby funds that can only be tapped when the government collects more revenue than expected, or when grants and foreign funds are available. Typically, the UA is invoked for emergencies or when infrastructure projects, social aid programs, and others are required.

Suansing argued that the panel 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 from the UA.

A big chunk of the UA will go to support foreign-assisted projects (FAP) and SAGIP, with P97.3 billion and P80.9 billion, respectively.

Minority solons, however, argued that there’s no use in defunding infrastructure from SAGIP if the allocation will be merely realigned to FAP, whose projects are mainly related to infrastructure.

Suansing, on the other hand, countered that the government cannot defund the FAP, citing international commitments.

Diokno has maintained that all big-ticket projects of the administration must be put in the programmed appropriations to ensure transparency in spending and prevent recurrence of the so-called budget manipulation.

“We should really clean the slate and start with zero unprogrammed appropriations to show the public that we are serious, we have fiscal discipline, and we are professional in dealing with the budget,” he asserted.

Speaker Bojie Dy, meanwhile, allayed concerns that the UA will be prone anew to misuse, saying the “control measures” are already in place.

“We really tried to make our budget proposal for next year transparent and accountable,” he said in an interview.

The Speaker also claimed the House has already removed infrastructure projects such as roads, bridges, and flood control from the unprogrammed list, realigning the funding to education, health, agriculture, and social protection.

Under the House’s version of the GAB, the lion’s share of P255 billion—intended to bankroll the corruption-plagued flood control projects—was realigned 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, while the health sector's budget increased from P320.5 billion to P411.2 billion. Of the sum, P60 billion will be added to the P113 billion subsidies allotted for state insurer PhilHealth, which received zero 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.

The realignment also pushed the budget for agriculture to P292.9 billion, with P10 billion going to fund the aid of around 1.43 million farmers and fisherfolk.