Category: Philippines Daily Inquirer

Budget watchdogs feel sidelined from the House of Representatives’ scrutiny of the proposed P7.2-trillion 2027 national budget, a civil society group representative and an analyst said on Wednesday, raising concerns about transparency in the budget process.

Lawmakers entered the second week of budget talks, yet civil society organizations (CSOs) remained excluded as rules for their participation remain unclear, blocking access and leaving their queries unanswered.

‘The House appropriations committee has gone cold on us,’ said Tim Salomon, program officer at Caucus of Development Non-Government Organizations Networks (CODE-NGO).

‘We were ‘seen-zoned’ when we send interpellation questions or call for dialogue,’ Salomon told the Inquirer in a text message.

CODE-NGO was among the groups accredited by the House to observe the budget talks last year, when CSOs were allowed to pose questions and send representatives to the hearings.

Nueva Ecija Rep. Mikaela Suansing, chair of the House appropriations committee, did not immediately respond to an Inquirer request for comment.

Consequential budget

But a person familiar with the accreditation process said a member of the committee will reach out to the Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department and the Office of the Secretary General to identify ‘implementation bottlenecks’ and streamline CSOs’ participation.

The House last week began its scrutiny of the National Expenditure Program submitted by Malacañang. It has since held marathon hearings on government agencies’ spending plan, hoping to pass the budget bill by Oct. 9.

Next year’s budget is deemed consequential as it comes ahead of the 2028 national elections. The 2027 spending plan is the last full budget to be implemented by the Marcos administration.

That underscores the need to keep the budget clean, according to Salomon. ‘We’re afraid because the Local Government Support Fund and aid programs are discretionary funds that, historically, have been used for elections,’ he said.

Former Finance Undersecretary Cielo Magno earlier called for clear rules on the allocation of special funds to local governments to keep them from becoming tools for political patronage ahead of the elections.

‘Not walking their talk’

Sen. Panfilo Lacson also flagged ‘questionable’ lump-sum appropriations for infrastructure projects.

In early August, Suansing said the appropriations committee could have a ‘closer coordination’ with CSOs so that their queries can be addressed directly to the agencies concerned.

But her remarks felt like hot air, according to public finance specialist Zy-za Nadine Suzara.

‘They are not walking their talk,’ she told the Inquirer on Wednesday. ‘They promised to make the budget process transparent and accountable but they have not taken any concrete steps to allow CSOs and watchdogs to meaningfully engage in the process.’

The committee’s lack of commitment to let CSOs join appeared to be the biggest stumbling block, Suzara said.

The Philippine economy’s growth potential is unlikely to exceed 6 percent over the next two decades as low productivity, weak manufacturing and the concentration of workers in low-productivity sectors constrain its expansion, according to economists at the De La Salle University (DLSU).

In their latest book, ‘The Philippine Economy Toward 2050,’ launched on Wednesday, DLSU economists said the country’s growth would gradually slow over the long term, falling to about 5.1 percent by 2040 and 3.6 percent by 2050.

This is well below the 6.5-percent to 8-percent long-term vision outlined in AmBisyon Natin 2040. The forecasts also assume no major crisis over the period, meaning an economic shock could further weigh on the country’s growth prospects.

‘We stress that the Philippines will experience progress, income per capita will continue to increase and poverty will decline, though the pace and scale of change will likely fall short of the ambitious and unrealistic goals set by the government,’ DLSU economists said.

Average growth from 2024 to 2050, meanwhile, is seen at 4.8 percent.

According to DLSU, the forecasts fall well below the growth rates needed to reach the Philippine government’s goal of becoming a trillion-dollar economy by 2033 or a $6.6-trillion economy by 2075.

A zero-poverty economy is also unlikely, as the rate is expected to be 7.9 percent by 2040.

‘First, while the Philippines may continue to do well during the coming decades, things will not be like what the government claims. The Philippine economy will do fine and progress steadily, but this is as far as it can go,’ DLSU economists said.

‘Achieving a 7-percent growth rate and sustaining it is unlikely. Add a crisis into the mix, and the transition into a high-income nation will take longer. Second, the push to achieve even just a 6-percent growth rate consistently for the next 25 years is simply impossible,’ they added.

Should another crisis occur, DLSU said it could reduce gross national income per capita in 2050 by $1,400 and set back economic progress by three years.

‘These results show the significant long-term implications of even just a single crisis. It is important to understand that this scenario is quite likely, given the frequency of crises in the past,’ they said.

‘It is also possible that recovery will be slower than what we present here. This means that real wages will grow by less, poverty incidence will decrease at a slower rate, and it will take the economy more time to become a high-income nation. This moves the Philippine economy further away from the Ambisyon Natin 2040 vision,’ they added.

Among the growth constraints cited by DLSU is the structure of the economy, where a large share of workers remain in agriculture and low-productivity services.

On the manufacturing side, the economists said that while manufacturing and wholesale and retail trade will have among the highest output shares, collectively accounting for close to 40 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), their shares are not expected to change significantly.

Agriculture is also a weak spot, with the sector expected to account for only 4 percent of GDP by 2050. Its contribution to economic growth is also projected to gradually decline as the number of agricultural workers falls and the sector continues to face low productivity.

The PANATA Awards 2026 enters a new chapter in its 17th year with a campaign that reflects what the Philippine Association of National Advertisers (PANA) stands for: the responsibility of advertisers to uphold standards that advance effective, responsible, and impactful brand building.

As ‘The Award for Advertisers, By Advertisers’, PANATA occupies a unique position in the industry. Judged by senior brand builders and leaders across the industry, it recognizes work that delivers measurable business results while upholding the highest standards of strategic thinking, creativity, and responsible brand stewardship.

Recognition matters not simply for the prestige it brings, but for the shared responsibility behind the work it celebrates.

Not only success-but the principles that define it.

Not only achievement-but the values that endure beyond it.

For PANA, the PANATA Awards represents more than honoring exceptional campaigns. It reaffirms the Association’s commitment to define, uphold, build upon, and elevate the standards of Philippine brand building.

This year, PANA invites advertisers, brand builders, agencies, and marketing partners to submit their most effective work from 2025 and join the country’s leading brand builders as part of an institution that celebrates not only achievement, but lasting impact.

As the country’s foremost recognition for effective, responsible, and impactful brand building, PANATA continues to honor the work that sets today’s standards and inspires the work that will shape tomorrow.

Important Dates

Early Bird Submission – August 30, 2026

Final Submission – September 11, 2026

Awards Night – November 18, 2026, Manila Ballroom, Manila Marriott Hotel, Pasay City

The Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (PDRRMC) has recommended placing the entire province of Occidental Mindoro under a state of calamity following massive damage from recent storms that intensified the southwest monsoon.

So far, the province has recorded over P2 billion in estimated damage to infrastructure, livelihoods, projects, power supply, and other sectors from Aug. 6 to 19, according to the assessment presented at the meeting.

The PDRRMC recommended the province-wide state of calamity in a virtual meeting on Wednesday, chaired by Gov. Eduardo B. Gadiano, where consolidated reports from local governments and national government agencies on the impact of the recent disasters were discussed.

The agency said the extent of the damage and its impact on communities warranted the declaration to facilitate faster response, rehabilitation, and recovery efforts across the province.

The recommendation will be submitted to the Sangguniang Panlalawigan for consideration during its regular session on Sept. 1.

If approved, the declaration would allow the provincial government to mobilize additional mechanisms and resources to address the needs of affected communities, including the P30,166,788.90 30% Quick Response Fund.

Board Members Alex Del Valle and Allan V. Credo and Magsaysay Mayor Cesar M. Tria Jr., along with representatives of various government agencies and offices, attended the meeting.

Representatives from the Philippine Army’s 203rd Infantry Brigade, 68th Infantry Battalion and 76th Infantry Battalion also presented reports and assessments on the extent of the disasters’ impact on communities.

The provincial government said it would continue its response efforts to address the immediate needs of affected residents and help communities recover from the disasters.

RJ Abarrientos has done enough to be part of the conversation on the PBA’s best clutch shooters today.

And even if he hasn’t shown his touch with Gilas Pilipinas yet, the star Ginebra guard isn’t fazed.

Abarrientos has settled into the role of a pure point guard, a facilitator for the national team that is set to open its bid in the 2027 Fiba World Cup Asian qualifiers against Jordan on Friday at the Mall of Asia Arena.

‘Of course, as a guard, I’m very excited to have these players [as teammates], to have players [as tall as] AJ (Edu) and June Mar (Fajardo),’ he said. ‘As a guard, they are the biggest impact for the team.’

‘As a guard … I need to focus on how we can execute as a team, in offense and defense. That’s my job, to make their job easier inside the court.’

Abarrientos picked passing over hunting down his shots in a heartbreaking 106-102 double overtime loss to New Zealand in the previous qualifying window, finishing with 10 assists that helped four players finish in double figures.

With Kai Sotto back in the fold, Abarrientos sees his playmaking duties get a tad easier.

‘The most crucial [thing] for me as a guard is to be vocal for them also and give the right help for the bigs,’ said the Best Player of the Conference awardee. ‘There were a lot of failures in our practices, but we know that we can fix it. I’m very thankful that I have teammates, legends and veterans here in Gilas who can also support me in my career in PBA.’

‘I’m very happy that I’m here and I can help them.’

Abarrientos and his teammates have their work cut out for them in this window, where they will also face Iran.

The Philippines finished 2-4 in the previous windows and sit outside the top four teams that will advance. Gilas Pilipinas is seeking no less than a sweep to grease their path, beginning with the 8:30 p.m. duel against the Jordanians.

The Light Rail Manila Corporation (LRMC) on Thursday said it will strengthen its maintenance protocols for its LRT-1 fleet following a recent water leak incident in one of its trains.

The LRMC made the pronouncement as it assured the public that its maintenance team is already ‘fully on top’ of the water leak incident that occurred on one of its LRT-1 railway carriages.

‘Our Maintenance Team identified a defective air-conditioning unit (ACU) drain line valve, which broke unexpectedly prior to its expected 3-to-5-year lifespan,’ the LRMC said in a statement.

‘The affected valve has since been replaced, and the unit is undergoing rigorous safety and maintenance checks to ensure optimal performance,’ it added.

With this, the LRMC announced that it will enhance its maintenance protocols by increasing the inspection frequency of the ACU drain valve from every 10,000 kilometers to every 5,000 kilometers.

‘In the longer term, we plan to replace these valves across the fleet to help prevent similar occurrences in the future,’ the LRMC said.

A clip of the water leak incident went viral on social media on Wednesday, Aug 26, prompting netizens to point out how the country’s flood problem seemed to spill over beyond the streets and into trains.

The Visayas Grid will continue to be on red and yellow alerts on Thursday, Aug. 27, said the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP).

In an advisory, the NGCP said the Visayas Grid will be placed under red alert from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m.

It will then be placed under yellow alert 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. to 9 p.m.

‘A red alert status is issued when power supply is insufficient to meet consumer demand and the transmission grid’s regulating requirement,’ the NGCP said.

Meanwhile, a yellow alert is issued when the operating margin ‘is insufficient to meet the transmission grid’s contingency requirement.’

According to the NGCP, the red and yellow alerts continued as nine power plants remained on forced outage, while 16 plants were still running on derated capacities.

This number of compromised plants reflected a total of 916.2 megawatts unavailable to the grid.

Furthermore, Visayas’ large coal plants TVI 1, TVI 2 and KSPC 1 also remained unavailable as only limited power imports could also be received from Mindanao.

Wouldn’t it be great if you didn’t have to shell out extra money when using digital payments to settle your electricity, toll fee, water or other merchant fees?

This, according to Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Deputy Governor Mamerto Tangonan, is next on the banking regulator’s digitalization push. Earlier, the order to rationalize fund transfer fees created a bandwagon of banks (led by Bank of the Philippine Islands) waiving Instapay fees.

Like what it has done with money transfer fees, the BSP does not intend to force banks to waive payment fees for services, utilities and/or goods.

All the BSP has to do is to standardize digital payment practices to enforce an often-overlooked rule.

There is already an existing rule that such fees should be shouldered by the merchants, utility or collecting firms, not the paying consumer, Tangonan pointed out.

‘The rule says that it should be the merchant or the biller who will pay.’ Tangonan told Biz Buzz. ‘Just follow their own rules.’

‘So they need to make the billers or the merchants pay for it, not the consumer. Kasi ikaw na nga nagbabayad (You are already the one paying),’ he added.

Recently, Land Bank of the Philippines started waiving fees on online payments to government agents. But what the BSP is envisioning is to relieve consumers and shift the burden to all merchants/billers. That extra P5, P10, P12 or P15 won’t have to disappear from your e-wallet or bank account.

So the payment platforms will still collect that fee, but get it from their billers.

And from the BSP’s perspective, it’s not too much to let the billers take that burden.

‘Delivery of that service has a cost. But you know, it’s the same platform that you use for other things, like bills payment, merchant payment. So they can still make money from those services … and then they cross-sell credit products,’ Tangonan said.

‘For them, what’s the alternative if they don’t have digital channels? They have to set up multiple offices to collect cash payments. Do they want that?’

That will be another big win for consumers.

The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) has purged ‘duplicate projects’ under its proposed budget for 2027, bringing the number down to just over 11,000 from the typical average of 20,000, Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon said on Wednesday.

The reduction was the result of a ‘strict project evaluation system’ that was implemented in reviewing infrastructure spending for next year, reforms that Dizon said were necessary to prevent a repeat of last year’s multibillion-peso flood control corruption scandal.

‘This is not a perfect budget, but we are trying our best to fix the problems we have seen in the past,’ he told reporters on the sidelines of the hearing on the proposed P643.95-billion DPWH budget for next year. The amount represents a 21.59-percent increase from this year’s P529.59 billion.

The DPWH spending plan includes P107.4 billion for flood control projects, now a magnet of criticism whenever flash floods cause widespread disruptions despite the heavy allocations.

Geo-tagging

‘We will not go back to the old ways,’ Dizon said. ‘Every project that enters here must have a plan.’

In his presentation, he noted the reduction in infrastructure projects over a five-year period from 22,836 in 2023; 25,545 in 2024; 25,301 in 2025; 17,861 in 2026; to 11,395 proposed for 2027.

‘We really worked hard to bring down the number of projects,’ Dizon said.

Aside from eliminating duplicate or overlapping projects, the DPWH focused on prioritizing big-ticket projects and followed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s directive to remove those worth below P5 million under the Big Infrastructure Program.

Dizon also said projects must meet stringent documentation requirements and be backed with validated geo-tagged photos, signed off by district engineers and their regional directors, and endorsed by regional and local development councils.

‘The project engineers … need to go on-site and photograph the site with the coordinates attached automatically to the photos,’ he said.

‘We want to tell everyone, especially those working in the DPWH, that if they deceive us, they will suffer the same consequences as those who are in jail. We need our fellow citizens to report to us. We cannot solve this on our own,’ Dizon said.

No ‘leadership fund’

Several public works officials from Mimaropa (Mindoro, Marinduque, Romblon, and Palawan) and Bulacan district offices have been detained and put on trial for graft, malversation of public funds and unexplained wealth, among other charges.

Dizon also clarified that there is no ‘leadership fund’ hidden within budget, stressing that allotments are based on needs and whether they complied with project requirements.

Former Public Works Secretary Manuel Bonoan, who is facing graft and plunder charges, described the ‘leadership fund’ as allocations within the national budget intended to fund senators’ pet projects under the agency.

The DPWH has also scrapped the ‘parametric formula’ that dictated how allocations to each engineering office were set.

Fair distribution

‘We simplified the allocations to be based on three core components,’ Dizon said, referring to the president’s marching order to prioritize pending projects, repair damaged structures and address basic infrastructure needs of communities.

Proposed public works should also have no right-of-way issues to ensure construction, he said, noting that ‘many projects were rendered unimplementable’ due to a lack of funding for easement conflicts.

The DPWH also sought to make next year’s infrastructure spending fairly distributed nationwide after past budgets were deemed biased toward Luzon, according to Dizon.

He said the DPWH is moving toward making infrastructure allotments ‘more needs-based’ after observing that more than half of the budget in the past decade had been allocated to Luzon.

‘But this is a process that will require several years of correcting,’ Dizon said.

Luzon received an average of 56 percent of the agency’s budgets over the past decade, a DPWH presentation showed, with Visayas getting 17 percent and Mindanao 27 percent.

In its spending plan for next year, Luzon’s share was cut to 52.65 percent, Visayas went up to 19.8 percent, while Mindanao took 27.55 percent

Dizon said his agency would work to ensure the public works budget is ‘more equitable for the regions that need it most,’ referring to Bicol, Eastern Visayas, Zamboanga and Caraga regions, which he described were some of the areas ‘with the highest poverty incidences.’

The Philippine Navy’ Naval Command Western Mindanao (NCWM) seized suspected smuggled cigarettes and diesel fuel worth at least P147 million in the Zamboanga Peninsula in two separate operations the past few days.

Rear Admiral Constancio Arturo Reyes Jr., NCWM commander, confirmed Thursday they intercepted an unmarked motorboat off Barangay Labuan, Zamboanga City last Saturday, Aug. 22.

The vessel was found carrying undocumented diesel fuel, with the contraband and boat valued at P52.27 million, he said.

Two days later, on August 24, NCWM operatives intercepted M/B Jiboy off Pangasinan Island, Sulu.

Authorities discovered 611 master cases and 37 reams of foreign-brand cigarettes, with the vessel and cargo estimated at P95.01 million.

The combined seizures amounted to P147.29 million worth of alleged illicit fuel, cigarettes, and vessels.

All confiscated items were turned over to the Bureau of Customs-Port of Zamboanga for legal disposition.

Reyes said NCWM will sustain maritime security operations to disrupt smuggling networks and prevent Western Mindanao waters from being used for illicit trade.

The successive interceptions highlight NCWM’s intensified campaign against contraband, underscoring its resolve to protect legitimate commerce and enforce maritime laws across Western Mindanao, he added. INQ