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Jose Rodel Clapano - The Philippine Star
December 27, 2025 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — The House of Representatives should make a full disclosure of the detailed information on the distribution of funds for each congressional district in the country ahead of voting for the 2026 General Appropriations Act (GAA) on Dec. 29, Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco said yesterday.
“If nothing is being hidden, release the list,” Tiangco said in a statement.
He said full disclosure of the distribution of budget allocations to each congressional district is non-negotiable.
He said the House of Representatives must release detailed information on how funds are distributed per congressional district and per party-list before lawmakers cast their votes on the budget.
Tiangco said he has been calling for the release of the information since Oct. 13. With bicameral deliberations over, he said there is no reason to withhold the results.
“If this is not released, it is hard to vote because there is no way to check if there are districts or party-list with bloated budget. We must make sure that what happened in the 2025 GAA will not happen anymore, where there are districts with sudden bloated budget because funds were inserted without the knowledge of the district representative,” Tiangco said.
Bare allocables, incentives
The House must disclose all the “allocables” and “incentives” for congressmen in the 2026 GAA before the national budget is approved next week, Batangas 1st district Rep. Leandro Leviste said yesterday.
At a press conference, Leviste said congressmen are given allocations even beyond the P401.3-billion “allocable” budget for projects of the Department of Public Works and Highways listed in the documents from the office of the late DPWH undersecretary Maria Catalina Cabral.
He said the “allocables” and “incentives” covered the DPWH, Department of Health, Department of Social Welfare and Development, Department of Labor and Employment, Department of Agriculture, National Irrigation Authority and the Department of Education.
Leviste said a lawyer-staff of Nueva Vizcaya Rep. Mikaela Suansing, chairperson of the House committee on appropriations, met with him a week before the House voted for the approval of the 2026 national budget and showed him a piece of paper supposedly itemizing the “incentives” for him in exchange for his vote.
“If public funds are being used as so-called ‘incentives’ for congressmen before voting on the 2026 budget, the public should at least know the ‘allocables’ or ‘incentives’ each congressman gets, whether from DPWH, DOH, DSWD, DOLE, DA, NIA, DepEd or any other government agency. The public deserves to know this before Congress ratifies the 2026 budget next week,” Leviste said.
