President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Wednesday, October 15, announced that the bicameral conference committee for the 2026 national budget deliberation will be livestreamed.
The bicameral conference committee is widely suspected of being a source of corruption after last-minute changes to the national budget were allegedly made during the closed-door meeting.
Lawmakers have been accused of inflating parts of the budget for kickbacks.
In an interview with the media at Malacañang Palace, Marcos said it has changed now.
‘I have an agreement with the Senate President and Speaker na ganun ang gagawin natin. We will livestream the entire process so that if there are questionable, shall we say insertions or additions or all that, it will also be clear who made those changes or who proposed those changes,’ Marcos said.
The president said there is also no longer a small committee making large changes.
Marcos earlier threatened Congress not to make gross changes to the National Expenditure Program, which has repeatedly happened over the past three budget years. During his State of the Nation Address, Marcos threatened to veto the budget that Congress would pass if they changed it.
Now, Marcos said there appeared to be no longer a need to act on this threat after seeing the recently passed budget of the House of Representatives.
‘I do not think, from the last time that I saw the last version of the budget, I did not see anything that broke away from the plans of the national government,’ Marcos said in a mix of English and Filipino.
However, Marcos said that he is not closing the door on a veto, since the process is still ongoing.
The admin is currently experiencing a highly controversial corruption scandal. Several high-profile leaders are suspected of inserting budget into flood control projects for later kickbacks.
While no explicit reason has been given, the corruption scandal has already seen the replacement of both the House Speaker and the Senate President.
Billions of pesos are suspected to have been stolen by officials and contractors in kickback schemes. Despite the high-profile nature of these cases, formal charges have yet to be filed for any government official.