[In This Economy] This Halloween season, what scares me the most is the 2027 budget

Thanks to the efforts of the People’s Budget Coalition (PBC) and other budget watchdogs, we’re now discovering just how horrific the 2027 budget is turning out to be.

The latest revelations include farm-to-market roads whose coordinates lead to the sea. There’s one supposedly in Nueva Ecija but with coordinates near the Philippine Rise. Another is supposedly in Cebu, but mapped in the Celebes Sea near Indonesia. A third was plotted in waters near Brunei. The reported allocations were P23 million, P30 million, and P55 million, respectively, or P108 million in total.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In a Senate hearing earlier this week, AJ Montesa of the People’s Budget Coalition said that red flags in the 2027 budget—comprising patronage-driven pork allocations—now exceed a trillion pesos. Trillion with a T! This comprises nearly P700 billion in hard pork (politicized infrastructure), P210 billion in soft pork (ayuda or financial assistance), and P112 billion in shadow pork (unprogrammed appropriations).

As for dubious infrastructure, they flagged nearly 7,000 projects including multipurpose buildings, farm-to-market roads, and irrigation projects. These projects are not bad per se. But Ken Abante, co-convenor of the PBC, told the Senate in a recent hearing, “The problem is that these nearly 7,000 projects have no supporting attachments, no justification or explanation for why they were included. This is alarming because it is the same modus operandi employed by former Speaker Martin Romualdez and former congressman Zaldy Co that led us to the flood control scandal.”

What’s more, everyone seems to be washing their hands or feigning ignorance about these huge insertions.

When asked about the dubious farm-to-market (and in some cases, farm-to-sea) roads, Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. said he was unaware of the insertions. The context is that the Department of Agriculture has taken over the implementation of farm-to-market roads since 2025.

If it’s true, however, that Secretary Laurel was caught unawares, that only underscores that members of the executive can no longer recognize the budget they initially proposed. Congress has hijacked the budget process, and the budget now has a life of its own.

Regarding the farm-to-sea projects, Laurel added that encoding or transcription errors could be blamed. That is possible, and the coordinates alone don’t establish that the projects are fictitious or that money was stolen. But typographical errors betray the lack of complete staff work and vetting that should be expected of a bill as important as the budget.

Pork for the presidential son

The PBC also flagged that much of the pork inserted by the House of Representatives in recent weeks went to House leaders including the presidential son himself, Ilocos Norte 1st District Represenative Sandro Marcos.

In the latest budget bill, there’s a whopping P4.745 billion for the Ilocos Norte 1st District Engineering Office, spread across 433 public works projects. Of that amount, P1.911 billion or 40.3% is for multipurpose buildings. Another P1.416 billion is for flood control and drainage, while P1.162 billion goes to access roads and bridges.

In other words, two in every five pesos in this project list would go to multipurpose buildings alone! Just how many multipurpose buildings does that part of Ilocos Norte need?

More strikingly, 405 projects worth P4.368 billion, or 92% of the total allocation, have no identified match in President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s budget proposal. In short, this was inserted by the House itself, to benefit the president’s son, who’s also the House majority leader.

The allocations don’t establish that Sandro personally requested or received the money. But P4.368 billion in unmatched projects is a lot of money to leave unexplained.

The data suggest that the House leadership won big in the budget insertions. Representative Mika Suansing, chair of the committee on appropriations, is also a clear winner, alongside House Speaker Bojie Dy, Senior Deputy Speaker Ferdinand Hernandez, and other Isabela representatives allied with the Speaker.

Going back to Sandro Marcos’ budget allocations, House Deputy Speaker Ronaldo Puno came to the defense and points fingers on the executive. He said that amendments are itemizations of executive lump sums, and claimed that agencies had cleared the changes. But that’s false. The amendments came from the House bill, and lawmakers are in fact to blame.

Meanwhile, the Palace also came to the defense of the presidential son, saying it’s “premature” to criticize the budget. But as rightly pointed out by Zy-za Nadine Suzara, my budget expert friend, it’s the executive that should raise a howl first because lawmakers are mangling the so-called “President’s Budget” beyond recognition.

My UP School of Economics colleague Cielo Magno, has challeneged President Marcos to veto the billions of insertions in his son’s district, if the President is really sincere in fixing the budget process. I’m not holding my breath for this, personally, for I see that this is a last-ditch effort on the part of the Marcoses to milk the budget before the President steps down in 2028, which is less than two years from now.

Ayuda over public services

The questionable allocations extend to ayuda, or financial assistance.

According to the PBC, the House raised funding for five aid programs from P72 billion in the executive proposal to P137 billion. That’s another P65 billion. The coalition warned that lawmakers’ referral letters can give them influence over who receives assistance.

The health budget shows why this matters. The House nearly doubled the proposed allocation for Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients (MAIFIP), from about P24 billion to P49.2 billion. Meanwhile, the coalition reported cuts to immunization, health promotion, and health facilities.

Sure, families facing hospital bills need immediate help. But weakening services that prevent illness can leave more families needing that help later. Why make patients chase assistance when government could strengthen the services and insurance coverage that would spare them the expense?

There’s a political incentive here. A patient who gets assistance through a politician’s office knows whom to personally thank. The benefits of vaccination or a properly funded hospital are less easily claimed as a personal favor.

In an ideal world, patients must be able to get help without approaching. Publicly funded healthcare should be accessible based on need, never on political connections.

Hope in the bicam?

To the credit of the Senate, they are much more willing to engage civil society compared to the House. As Ken Abante puts it, the difference is “night and day.”

And yet, the Senate version still has to be reconciled with the House version through the bicameral conference committee or bicam in December.

I worry that the House will find a way to prevail. Allocations removed by the Senate can be pushed for again during negotiations. Without a public record of each proposed change, its proponent, and its justification, Filipinos will struggle to track which projects survived and what was sacrificed to accommodate them. We already saw this happen in last year’s bicam, even if the proceedings (or at least part of them) were livestreamed.

Very clearly, the budget process is broken, and in coming years there must be drastic changes to the process: publish amendments and supporting documents must be non-negotiable before approval. Open bicam deliberations must be scrutinized publicly. Budget watchdogs must be given ample time to examine budget bills every step of the way.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. must also be willing to veto unjustified items. But as it appears (and as I had previously surmised), the 2027 budget is turning out to be a massive incentive system for lawmakers who were in favor of the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte.

I was personally surprised to know from the data that Batangas 2nd District Representative Gerville Luistro, the lead public prosecutor of the Senate impeachment trial against Duterte, got a P1.3-billion insertion for her home district.

When asked about this, she said, “I will be looking into that… What I can say is, I was not able to participate in the budget process and that is because of the impeachment trial and I am very interested to know the details about that.” But if she’s indeed surprised by this, then does that mean she’s not on top of everything that happens in (or will affect) her own district?

The anomalies are piling up, and even business groups are taking a stance over the budget anomalies. In a recent joint statement, more than 30 business groups and civil society organizations—including the Makati Business Club, Management Association of the Philippines, and Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry—warned that the 2027 budget risks repeating history if anomalies prevail.

They added, “A budget free of politically driven insertions will strengthen investor confidence, protect the country’s fiscal space, and ensure that every peso builds the infrastructure, schools, and health services the nation truly needs.”

Without genuine reforms I’m afraid we’ll get another corrupt, patronage-driven budget in 2027, the last full-year budget of the Marcos administration. The Senate may be more open to reform, but I doubt the sincerity of some of their members will be enough to stop the House from getting its way. – Rappler.com

Jan Carlo “JC” Punongbayan, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of the Philippines School of Economics. His professional experience includes the Securities and Exchange Commission, the World Bank Office in Manila, the Far Eastern University Public Policy Center, and the National Economic and Development Authority. JC writes a weekly economics column for Rappler. He is also co-founder of UsapangEcon.com and co-host of Usapang Econ Podcast.

His first book, False Nostalgia: The Marcos “Golden Age” Myths and How to Debunk Them, was published by Ateneo de Manila University Press in February 2023. His second book, Twin Plagues: How Duterte and COVID-19 Wrecked the Philippine Economy, was published by Penguin Random House SEA in June 2026. Follow him on Instagram (@jcpunongbayan).