House OKs P6.793-T budget on second reading 

The House of Representatives on Friday approved the proposed P6.793 trillion national budget for 2026 on second reading after reductions in allocations for the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), the Office of the Vice President, and unprogrammed funds.

Lawmakers voted via voice vote.

The approved budget realigned P255 billion of the DPWH budget to other social programs with the education sector getting the lion’s share of P56 billion.

The P56 billion is redistributed to the Philippine Science High School System, Commission on Higher Education, Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, and State Universities and Colleges.

Likewise, the House reduced the OVP’s proposed 2026 budget of P889 million in new appropriations and restored it to its 2025 level of P733 million.

This came after Vice President Sara Duterte's refusal to defend her proposed budget before the House plenary. She instead sent an undersecretary, who presented Duterte's conditions before attending.

House appropriations panel chairperson and Nueva Ecija Rep. Mikaela Suansing defended the cuts, saying that the amount is enough to cover OVP’s mandate.

“We want to protect the interests of the personnel within the office of the Vice President and so we will ensure that the personal services [budget] will reflect that. Second, we will also ensure that the final budget of the Office of the Vice President will be sufficient for that,” she said.

Further, the House version of the 2026 budget also removed the P35 billion worth of funding for Strengthening Assistance for Government Infrastructure Program (SAGIP) lodged under the unprogrammed fund.

Items under the unprogrammed fund are only funded when there is an excess revenue collection or funds from foreign loans or grants.

“Infrastructure projects would no longer be part of the authorized uses for unprogrammed appropriations, save for infrastructure projects under foreign-assisted projects. What we have now [under the unprogrammed appropriations] is for strengthening assistance for social program which would be P45 billion in total,” Suansing said.

“And all of those [P45 billion] relate to programs under the Department of Agriculture such as subsidies to farmers, rice subsidies...under the DSWD (Department of Social Welfare and Development) as an augmentation for the 4Ps (conditional cash transfer program), given that there is an expected shortfall in the funding for 4Ps due to the reduction [of its budget] from 2025,” she added. —LDF, GMA Integrated News