House reallocated nearly P200B in 2027 budget bill, says watchdog

MANILA, Philippines — The House of Representatives shuffled roughly P200 billion within the proposed P7.2-trillion 2027 national budget.

This is equivalent to about P80 billion more than what was publicly disclosed by a select committee of ranking lawmakers, a watchdog assessment showed on Thursday.

The House hiked 123 budget bill line items by P198.9 billion, with more than half of the additions streamed toward infrastructure, health and healthcare aid programs.

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The information comes from People’s Budget Coalition Co-convener Adolfo Jose “AJ” Montesa’s technical assessment. 

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The funding for those increases were likely carved out from 87 line items, whose combined reductions matched the total amount of realigned spending added across other agencies, Montesa added.

Bulk of the reductions were drawn from foreign-assisted projects, flagship railway developments, pension and gratuity funds and calamity response funding.

Montesa’s review of the reallocations sheds light on how the Budget Amendments Review Sub-committee (BARSc) altered the spending bill.

This evaluation is contained in the report sent to the plenary, and subsequently approved by the House floor on Wednesday,

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READ: House OKs P7.2-T spending bill on 2nd reading

The BARSc convened last week to finalize tweaks to the spending plan.

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The sub-committee did not issue a formal report showing how it made the amendments that totaled to about P116 billion, based on a projected spreadsheet during a public livestream of its meeting.

“The BARSc tables read into the livestream on 1 October summed to P116.3 billion of additions. The committee report shows P199 billion,” Montesa’s report read.

“Of the 8,835 lines in the workbook, 210 changed,” it said.

The report said about P98 billion in extra funding was lodged under the budget line items of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), far from the P11.49 billion the BARSc showed last week.

“The difference is almost entirely DPWH, where the subcommittee announced an P11.5 billion net increase. But the bill shows P98 billion added to some lines and P86 billion taken from others,” it said.

READ: House special panel hikes public works’ proposed 2027 funding by P11B

Montesa’s report showed that 61 percent of the P198.9 billion were directed mainly to DPWH’s multi-purpose buildings (+P42.7 billion) and access roads (+P29.2 billion), the social welfare department’s cash aid scheme (+P24.8 billion), and the health department’s financial aid for indigent patients (+P24 billion).

On the other hand, most of the line items that took a cut to fund the line item increases were sourced from foreign-assisted bypass roads (-P53.5 billion), the Metro Manila Subway project and the North-South Commuter Railway (-P34.7 billion), pension and gratuity fund (-P10 billion), calamity fund (-P9.5 billion), and the health department’s immunization and family-health commodities (-P4.9 billion).

READ: DPWH eyes P20-B fund shift as House debates proposed 2027 budget

The DPWH’s budget appeared to have undergone a funding decentralization too, after its central office lost P42 billion, while most of the 198 district engineering offices nationwide gained P54 billion.

Though the DPWH’s total budget “barely” moved, the report said, the agency’s total funding rose by 1.7 percent to P654.1 billion.

Most of the reshuffled funding includes P54.6 billion slashed from the network development program and P7.4 billion from flood infrastructure works to direct P74.1 billion into the agency’s convergence program.

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“This is the pattern of every recent year: The executive proposes a national network. Congress rebuilds the department around locally identified projects,” the report analyzed. /apl