Watchdogs tag P970-B 2027 pork: House accused of backsliding into opacity
Beijing’s recent maritime activity raised concerns that it is extending its influence beyond the usual flashpoints in the WPS.
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Beijing’s recent maritime activity raised concerns that it is extending its influence beyond the usual flashpoints in the WPS.
Budget watchdogs under an umbrella organization have flagged P970 billion, or a significant portion of the P7.2-trillion proposed 2027 national budget, as discretionary funds vulnerable to being turned into a pork barrel.
The People’s Budget Coalition (PBC) composed of civil society groups said the amount raised red flags as it could involve questionable projects intended to fund political patronage ahead of the 2028 elections.
The 2027 national budget is currently being deliberated upon in the House of Representatives.
The PBC said the funds raised concerns over the growing use of discretionary allocations that could be redirected toward politically driven projects. The advocacy groups accused the House of having backslid into opacity.
The estimated lump sums in the pre-election year budget were adjusted higher from the earlier P735.56-billion estimates.
PBC technical analyst Hanz Gonzales announced the revision at a media briefing Friday, citing additional infrastructure items found to be lacking project documentation.
The new estimate was broken down into P680 billion for “hard pork” or Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) projects at risk of political insertion, lacking complete project attachments that showed a jump from P483 billion; P140 billion in “soft pork” or patronage-driven social assistance or “ayuda,” including P58.5 billion for local government unit support funds and anti-insurgency barangay programs spread across the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE), and Department of Health (DoH), and P112 billion in “shadow pork” which are the amounts lodged in unprogrammed appropriations (UA).
The remainder of the perceived pork barrel are allocations tied to the Office of the President, Office of the Vice President, and other offices.
Given its findings, the PBC said it felt “sidelined” in the budget process underway at the House of Representatives.
Detailing their experience with the process, PBC co-convenor Gybel Agregado said they had been “inbox-zoned” by the House Committee on Appropriations when it came to the questions they wanted to ask government agencies.
Rather than the appropriations panel, however, she said it was the Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department (CPBRD), the chamber’s think tank, that was coordinating with them, a body that had no decision-making power in the budget.
Gonzales explained that hard pork projects were those included in the proposed funding for the DPWH, which was allocated P643.95 billion under the National Expenditure Program (NEP).
The group also flagged the P140-billion budget allocated to ayuda programs within agencies like the DSWD, DoLE and DoH.
The PBC also questioned the collective P38 billion proposed for the Office of the President, Office of the Vice President, and Congress.
With their findings, Gonzales said the public should become more “vigilant” in calling out the “cancer” of “pork” budgets, which they noted is spreading throughout local and national agencies.
“We know that the pressure is up for politicians to reward their bulwarks to prepare for the 2028 elections…so we want to make known the flags to the media and to the public. We need to be even more vigilant considering that we are approaching the end of this administration,” he said.
Unsustainable fiscal path
Aside from highlighting anomalies it found in the budget, the coalition also noted that the administration has failed to follow the medium-term fiscal roadmap.
Of the goals previously set, the PBC said the government has fallen far below its targeted growth rate of between six and seven percent, as the recent growth rate fell to 2.6 percent in the second quarter.
Debt had also increased to 66 percent of the country’s gross domestic product — amounting to P19.07 trillion — despite a previous target of less than 51 percent.
Part of the group’s observations was the pattern by how economic managers have approached missed targets.
“We also noticed another pattern from our economic managers that every time they set a target and that target is missed…it’s not a policy or a strategy of the government that they change, rather it’s the targets themselves,” Gonzales said.
Doubling down on its findings, the PBC said that even with the perceived growth in the government budget, the “room” for spending was shrinking, based on figures from 2022 to 2027.
To illustrate its concern, the group noted that for every P100 allocated, only P36 was actually spent on social services and development projects compared to P40 in 2022.
Another particularly alarming finding was that the government has fallen far behind global benchmarks for spending.
While its peers, particularly its neighbors in Asia, posted public spending at 16.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), the Philippines is projected to spend just six percent under the 2027 NEP.
CSOs snubbed at House
Agregado said that it took until the second week of the budget deliberations for questions from civil society organizations (CSO) to be formally recognized and supposedly received.
The civic group leader said appropriations panel chairperson Rep. Mikaela Suansing had personally apologized to the CSOs for the snub and they would be given more opportunities to express their concerns about the budget.
“During this time, we felt some hope that our questions and the participation of CSOs could be improved,” she said. “In fact, it did for quite a bit.”
The DAILY TRIBUNE contacted Suansing’s office for comment on the group’s observations but received no response.
