The Office of the Vice President’s (OVP) budget was not discussed by the Budget Amendments Review Subcommittee (BARSc) because the hearing only covered agencies that would receive additional funding from the realigned Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) budget.
This was the explanation given by House Deputy Majority Leader and Lanao del Sur 1st District Rep. Zia Alonto Adiong on Thursday when asked why the OVP’s proposed ?902.8-million budget for 2026 was not taken up by the BARSc – despite several calls to either reduce it or revert it to its 2025 level of ?733 million.
The BARSc met on Wednesday to finalize proposed amendments to the 2026 national budget, during which some agencies – including those in the education sector – received larger allocations. The realignment was sourced from the ?255.5 billion slashed from the DPWH budget. ‘Because what we talk about in the BARSc is the P255 billion that was taken from the original, initial request ng DPWH. These are the flood control, these are the programs that were removed, mostly infra, flood control, and we tried to redistribute that to those agencies that may be needing more funding,’ Adiong, a vice chairperson of the committee on appropriations, said.
‘So those agencies that are not present, they were not part of the augmentations or did not make a request from the P255 billion that was initially allotted to DPWH and later on was slashed [.] so that is what we talked about,’ he added.
According to Adiong, lawmakers who wish to make changes to the OVP budget can propose amendments during the period of amendments, which will be held on Friday, October 10.
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‘There’s a period of amendments, what we talked about in the BARSc is the institutional amendments because we have made adjustments. Remember when we had the first meeting at the BARSc, there were line items that agencies want to reduce, they said that it is not their priority,’ he said.
‘So definitely since we would open a period of amendments, we expect that there are individual amendments that will be raised, especially from the Minority bloc, we are expecting that there will be a couple of motions and proposed amendments, individual amendments coming from their side,’ he added.
Several lawmakers from the Minority called for the reduction of the OVP budget after Vice President Sara Duterte failed to show up or send an undersecretary-level representative to the plenary debates.
According to ACT Teachers party-list Rep. Antonio Tinio, he would push for the reduction of OVP’s budget – from P902 million to just P198 million, or the OVP’s proposed personal services (PS). Mamamayang Liberal party-list Rep. Leila de Lima said that because of Duterte’s actions, she initially thought of proposing to cut OVP’s budget to zero, but she said thinking of employees prompted her to just push for a budget cut. Adiong, for his part, prefers that the OVP budget for 2025 be the same amount given to the agency for 2026. Also, the lawmaker maintained that OVP will not get a budget cut should the House retain the P733 million that was given to the said office for 2025.
‘I just want to also correct the term, because the budget of the OVP is still a request – the P900 (million), so if you if you try to really assess and just to use the right term, it is not really a decrease because there is a pending request for an additional P200 (million). THis means the working draft or the baseline is the P733 million,’ he said.