2 hours ago
1
Upgrade to High-Speed Internet for only ₱1499/month!
Enjoy up to 100 Mbps fiber broadband, perfect for browsing, streaming, and gaming.
Visit Suniway.ph to learn
Neil Jayson Servallos - The Philippine Star
December 17, 2025 | 12:00am
Senators Ping Lacson, Rodante Marcoleta, and JV Ejercito, alongside Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla, continue plenary deliberations on the proposed P6.793-trillion national budget for 2026 at the Senate in Pasay City on November 20, 2025.
STAR / Ryan Baldemor
MANILA, Philippines — Some senators would rather have the government run on a reenacted 2025 budget than rush the passage of a potentially “graft-ridden” 2026 spending plan, Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson said yesterday, as senators continued to flag unresolved issues in the proposed outlay.
Lacson pointed to a new concern raised by Sen. Francis Pangilinan involving farm-to-market road (FMR) projects, saying billions of pesos’ worth of items were “not properly identified,” with some revised from what the Senate approved on third reading.
Both houses had approved P33 billion for the Department of Agriculture’s FMR projects, which was more than double the P16 billion President Marcos had asked for.
While Pangilinan earlier backed doubling the funding on assurances that each FMR had proper tags and specifications, he said “a new list with the same amount was resubmitted with P8 billion worth of projects lacking coordinates etc.”
He, however, could not say whether it was the House of Representatives or the DA that submitted the new list.
“My position is—better a reenacted budget in January or even in the entire first quarter of 2026 than an unchecked, corruption-conducive and worse, graft-ridden GAA,” Lacson said, noting that most senators in the majority bloc share the same view.
Finance committee chairman Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian explained that the DA wanted to replace several items under FMRs worth P8 billion. “So it’s an agency request. There is proper documentation, there’s letterhead,” he said.
“They will replace what’s inside an item with another item. Not an amount, just an item,” he said in Filipino, adding that he and Pangilinan are studying it further.
Reenacted budgets are not unprecedented, the most recent of which was in 2019 when the government operated under the reenacted P3.767-trillion 2018 national budget from January to April. Congress passed the spending law, with then president Rodrigo Duterte signing it on April 16, 2019.
A similar situation occurred in 2010, when the national budget was reenacted at the start of the year until a new GAA was enacted in February. — Delon Porcalla, Jose Rodel Clapano, Janvic Mateo, Emmanuel Tupas
