Evaluating the 2025 Philippine National Budget by Dr. Cielo Magno | Scientific Lecture 2025

Scientific Lecture: Evaluating the 2025 Philippine National Budget (Transcription)

Opening Remarks – Dr. Shirley Dita
Good morning, everyone. It is my pleasure to welcome you all to today’s scientific lecture on the Philippine national budget—a topic that holds significant implications for governance, economic development, and social welfare, a topic that all of us have become really interested in, probably because of the very controversial and much highly confidential funds. I can see that everyone, myself included, is eager to deepen their understanding of how our national budget serves as a blueprint for government priorities, resource allocation, and policy implementation. As we know, the budget is more than just numbers; it reflects the government’s vision for national development, the strategic distribution of public funds, and ultimately, the quality of services that reach Filipino communities. In an era where economic challenges, global uncertainties, and domestic demands are constantly evolving, a well-informed citizen plays a crucial role in ensuring transparency, accountability, and effective governance. Today, we are very fortunate to have Dr. Cielo Magno—I’m a fan—an esteemed economist and policy expert who will guide us through the complexities of the Philippine national budget: its formulation, priorities, and impacts on different sectors [of] society; and, of course, Dr. JC Punongbayan, a renowned professor and researcher, who will moderate today’s discussion. They will be properly introduced later. This lecture is part of PSSC’s ongoing commitment to fostering dialogue, advancing scholarship, and promoting evidence-based policy-making in the Philippines. I encourage all of you to actively engage in today’s discussion, ask questions, and critically examine how the budget affects various aspects of national development. May this session inspire deeper reflection on our roles, whether as academics, policymakers, practitioners, researchers, or just plainly concerned citizens, in shaping a more inclusive, responsive, and sustainable fiscal future for our country. Once again, thank you for being here, especially those who are here onsite, and I look forward to a productive discussion. Maraming salamat at mabuhay tayong lahat.

Introduction of Moderator – Dr. Lourdes Portus
Salamat sa palakpak. Don’t worry, maski kaunti tayo dito, we have so many online [participants]. Hybrid po kasi ito; so they will also be engaging with us during the open forum. Anyway, good morning, everyone. As has been our tradition, our General Assembly, which our constitution mandates to be held on the second Saturday of February, which is today, almost always has a ‘Feeding the Mind’ program or feature—a scientific lecture that picks the brains of distinguished social scientists regarding social issues. Today, the scientific lecture will be facilitated by another social scientist, a young economist. Parang anak ko na, pero kahit ang lawak-lawak ng agwat namin, iniidolize ko siya (laughs). If I were his age, sasabihin ko, “Nako, hindi na kita ma-reach” (laughs) because of the many accomplishments that he has made at a young age. I know he regularly posts blogs, and I really admire his critical and insightful comments regarding diverse social issues of our times. So, his critical lens show with the many posts that he makes to scrutinize our society. So, Dr. John Carlo Punongbayan is an assistant professor of the University of the Philippines (UP) School of Economics; and until recently, a visiting fellow of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) – Yusof Ishak in Singapore. He earned his Doctor of Philosophy in Economics in the UP School of Economics in 2021, where he also graduated—ito ‘yung nakakamangha—summa cum laude. He was actually awarded the José Encarnación Jr. Award for Excellence in Economics and the Gerardo Sicat Award for Best Undergraduate Thesis. ‘Di po ba, nakakamangha talaga ang kanyang accomplishments. Anyway, before joining the academe, Dr. Punongbayan worked at the Security and Exchange Commission, the World Bank Office in Manila, the FEU Public Policy Center, and the National Economic Development Authority. His current interests are macroeconomics, Philippine economic history, education economics, and development economics. JC writes a weekly economics column in Rappler.com. In 2023, his first book, False Nostalgia: The Marcos “Golden Age” Myths and How to Debunk Them, was published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press. Wala kaming kopya (laughs). Anyway, in 2024, JC received The Outstanding Young Men Award for Economics. So, ladies and gentlemen, let us warmly welcome Asst. Prof. John Carlo Punongbayan. 

Welcome Speech of Moderator and Introduction to Lecturer – Dr. JC Punongbayan
Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Dr. Portus for the glowing introduction. Actually, just yesterday, Cielo and I, and another friend of ours, Zyza Suzara, who is a budget expert, were in a webinar, also about the budget. So, for many months now, Cielo, Zy, and I have been more vocal about these budget issues because it affects all of us, and it pays for more Filipinos to know about these issues. For this morning, I’m happy to be just moderating the event (laughs). So, Cielo will be doing the heavy lifting this morning. Without further ado, it is my distinct honor and pleasure to introduce our speaker for this scientific lecture. She is a distinguished economist with extensive experience in both research and policy work across the public and private sectors, collaborating with local and international agencies. She earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from the University of the Philippines’ School of Economics and her Doctorate in Law and Public Policy in Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts in 2013. She’s also a fellow of the prestigious U.S. government-sponsored William Fulbright Scholarship Program until 2011. Currently, she is an associate professor at the University of the Philippines’ School of Economics, where she researches on and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in institutional economics, public finance, fiscal policy, extractive industries, and environmental economics, law and economics, and microeconomics. She has also held significant leadership roles in government, notably as the Former Secretary of the Fiscal Policy and Monitoring Group of the Department of Finance (DOF). In the international sphere, she is also an influential voice in global governance, representing civil society in the global steering committee of the open government partnership, which she co-chairs with the government of Spain, and a member of the international board of Extractive Industry’s Transparency Initiative for many years. In addition to her academic and policy work, she is an active board member of several prominent civil society organizations, including Bantay Kita, Action for Economic Reforms, Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development, Peace and Equity Holdings, and Tanghalang Pilipino, among others. Friends, dear PSSC members, ladies and gentlemen, let us welcome with a loud round of applause for today’s lecturer, Dr. Maria Cielo D. Magno.

Lecture Proper – Dr. Cielo Magno
Magandang umaga po sa ating lahat. Thank you very much for the PSSC—the officers of PSSC—for organizing this lecture, and for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts on the 2025 national budget. So, let me start my presentation. 
I will focus on three important issues regarding the national budget. First is on the political process, on how the budget was formulated; and then, the next one is on revenue management, because before we talk about what money are we allocating, it is also important to know where we are getting our money that we are allocating; and then, the third one is on the manner how the government allocated the taxes that are being collected by us. Before I proceed to the main topic, I want everyone to have a quick overview of what we call the budget process. So, sometimes, we’re just focused on what we see in Congress, but the budget process is actually more comprehensive than that, and there are various entry points for the public to participate in the budget process. So, every year is a complete cycle; we start with a budget call from the president. This is a budget preparation done at various agencies of government. When budgets are prepared by agencies, this is where performance evaluation also comes in. Before the budget requests of agencies are placed in the National Expenditure Program, we have to evaluate the performances of agencies, how well they’re utilizing the money, how well they’re implementing their programs and projects, and that will determine the amount of budget that will be allocated for them for the year. After the president would submit the budget to Congress, that is where legislation happens. After it’s legislated, part of the whole budget cycle is the execution, where we should actually be monitoring how government agencies are implementing the programs and the projects, as reflected in the national budget. I think another important aspect of the budget process that has been a focus of conversation in the past months is on the accountability aspect. So, this is where the role of the Commission on Audit (COA) comes in, and it is actually very interesting because a conversation highlighted how the confidential fund was being used by various government agencies. “Who are the agencies using the confidential fund?” Part of that conversation highlighted unliquidated funds of the University of the Philippines (laughs), and these are huge amounts. What is important also is understanding what audit and accountability means. On the surface, it can mean the level of compliance in terms of financial requirements in reporting how this money [are] utilized. But part of audit also is checking how this money was utilized. It’s not just about financial reporting, which is part of COA evaluation; but on a question whether a person can really validate how the money was spent. I think this is another important lecture, which I think the PSSC can sponsor, because for example, the question of confidential fund, “Is it audited or not?” In that administrative order joint circular, it requires a certain level of reporting. So, if we’re asking a basic question if it is audited or not, there are documents being submitted, vouchers to show how it is utilized; but the extent of auditing is questionable because on a regular auditing, we are required to comply with the procurement process to show that money is efficiently utilized, most cost-effective manner. In a confidential fund, you don’t need to follow the procurement process. In a regular audit of a regular allocation, you need official receipts to prove that you really used the fund for specific purposes. For [a] confidential fund, you only need vouchers, you only need invoices with people’s signatures showing the utilized money. In a regular audit, you have various COA offices, auditing, going through all these documents. In a confidential fund, there’s only a very specific office with very limited individuals looking at the documents submitted for the liquidation of confidential funds. Why? Because as we said, because of security reasons, the reason why you have confidential funds. And that’s why when the 2023-2024 budget were being discussed, a huge question is, “Why are various government agencies applying for confidential fund?”, “Do they have security work?”, “Are these agencies involved in national security?” If you would remember, the Department of Agriculture applying for a confidential fund, the Office of the Vice President requesting for millions of pesos for confidential fund, the Department of Education demanding confidential fund. It has become an issue, interestingly, because people started questioning this confidential fund, most of them disappeared in the 2024 budget, but some of them were retained. In fact, what is interesting is if you look at the confidential fund of the President, his confidential fund allocated for the Office of the President is much bigger than the confidential fund allocated to national intelligence agencies. So that’s the first question. And then the second question, aren’t you the President? Aren’t you in charge of all these intelligence agencies anyway? (laughs) If you need a briefing on national security and intelligence work, wouldn’t you ask them? So why is there a need for a separate confidential and intelligence fund for the President’s office, right? So that’s a big question that until now has not been answered. In fact, I did not include it here, but if you look at the pattern of how the intelligence and confidential fund of presidents increased over the years, the significant increase happened in 2020, during the time of the pandemic, when the country needs significant amount of money to address the problem of COVID; and yet, the President chose to increase his confidential fund and intelligence fund by a significant amount. ‘Pag nakita niyo ‘yung graph, hindi lang siyang simpleng increasing graph, significant jump siya. I have posted that online. But going back to the question of accountability, it’s not just from a citizen perspective, from a taxpayer’s perspective. It’s not enough to say that an agency has complied with the accounting requirements of the financial form that is required for them to submit. What is important in accountability is whether these projects were really able to achieve what they intend to achieve. If nagkaroon ng procurement, for example, ng air condition, there has to be a mechanism to check if that air condition really exists. And that’s why the confidential fund of the Vice President, when vouchers appeared that this confidential fund is being liquidated under a bogus name like Mary Grace Piatos, it’s not enough to have a good, you know, compliance of the financial reporting requirement of COA. They should be able to explain if these are real people. Otherwise, there’s no accountability in that aspect. And the answer that, “Oh, but it’s confidential”, and it’s about national security, is not a sufficient response because the design in terms of how to liquidate confidential fund has taken into account the aspect of national security. And that’s why access and the process of liquidation is limited to certain individuals and certain offices. So, that already addresses the confidential issue. So, I think this conversation has to continue because if we know the extent of confidential fund, it has started during the first Marcos’ term in the 70s. And over the years, President, Vice President, [and] agencies have been using confidential fund and we taxpayers have no idea how this money are really being spent. So that’s the accountability part. I know that the conversation and it has been frustrating, the energies focus on legislation, but I think on ways forward, there’s still room for us to participate in the execution and accountability. 

All right. So, just focusing on this stage, the budget legislation. So what happens in the budget legislation? As I mentioned a while ago, agencies would submit, for example, to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM). This will be consolidated. It becomes the national expenditure program and is endorsed by the President to Congress. The House of Representatives will start its deliberation. And this is what we see online on YouTube when Congresses would call the different agencies to explain their performance, explain their proposed budget; and that’s part of the role of the House of Representatives and the Senate. In our constitution, Congress can reallocate the money that was proposed by the executive, but it is the function of the executive to determine the size of the budget. Congress cannot increase the size of the pie; it cannot increase the budget, but it can reallocate the budget across agencies and across items. So from the House of Representatives, it goes to the Senate. The third reading version of the House can be different from the third reading version of the Senate. So there’s a need to reconcile those two bills, and those versions are then deliberated by the Bicameral Conference Committee. So, the Bicameral Conference Committee is composed of representatives from the Senate and the lower house, and their main task is to reconcile the differences in the version of the House and the Senate. What comes out from the Bicameral Conference Committee becomes the bill that is then enrolled for signature of the President; but before it is submitted to the President for signature, Congress again, the House of Representatives and the Senate, have to vote and confirm the decision of the Bicameral Committee. So in effect, ‘pag balik noon, wala nang changes dapat na magbabago because if the House of Representatives decide to change what came out from the Bicameral Conference, iba na naman ‘yun sa version of the Senate. So, parang touch move na ‘yan after the Bicam. They have to vote and that’s sent to Malacañang. So, what is the problem aside from what we’ve mentioned before on the opacity of the Bicameral Conference? Ang nangyayari kasi, while we were able to see House deliberations, Senate deliberations, the hearing of the various agencies, when it comes to the Bicameral Conference Committee, sometimes we don’t even know who are the members of the Bicameral Conference when they’re going to deliberate. No one can observe the deliberation. So, this year, unfortunately, the bicameral report was released by some legislators. And this has become an issue because some of the items in the bicameral report were blank. So, if this is the basis for the enrolled bill that the President signed, then who filled in the blanks in the bicameral report? And this bicameral report was signed by the members of the bicameral committee. So, it raises some legal question because if the bicameral report has blank items, then the bicameral report is incomplete. And that means the President would have signed an incomplete enrolled bill, which cannot become a law, but the President is insisting that the document he signed is complete. We haven’t seen, it hasn’t been made public yet, the enrolled bill—and this is part of the opacity and lack of transparency and accountability. Up to now, we haven’t seen the enrolled bill because that’s what we should be comparing, but the House of Representatives have made a statement that staff completed the blank—filled in the blank documents because they said they were mandated to do that. 

But if you check the language of the omnibus provision of the bicameral conference committee report, it says here, and it’s very clear, that technical staff of the House of Committee on Appropriations and the Senate Committee on Finance are authorized to affect corrections on typographical, grammatical, and printing errors only; it doesn’t include completing the blanks. The mandate to complete the budget only is with the legislators, not with the technical staff. But while there’s that question, there’s also the second point where if there are conflicts in terms of the conference report and the printed bill, it’s the printed bill that is going to prevail if there’s conflict, but the problem is, this is not just conflict. When we’re doing statistics, there are ways to reconcile differences in data, but it’s different when you have missing data. In this case, this is not just reconciling conflicting data; this is filling in missing data. So, this will continue to become a legal issue and a legal question on the 2025 GAA (General Appropriations Act). I think some individuals and legislators already filed a case related to this. So, it will be interesting how the Supreme Court will decide on this matter because our Supreme Court has a tendency to respect the processes of the Congress, as an equal body, and this is part of the internal process of Congress. So, it will be interesting how the Supreme Court will decide on these cases because for me, the anchor or the principles behind these cases is not just about clarifying simple processes of Congress, but really establishing transparency and accountability to the public on the operations of Congress. So, this is the problem that is being raised with respect to the budget process. 

In terms of public expenditure management, the framework that we normally use in evaluating it is on, one, fiscal discipline, how well we are raising revenue and managing our debts; allocative efficiency, how are we prioritizing the money that we collect from the public; and operational efficiency. So on the operational efficiency aspect, I’m not gonna discuss it today. I’ll focus on the first two.

So, with respect to revenue management, one of the important indicators that we usually examine is the debt-to-GDP (Gross Domestic Product) ratio. Normally, the threshold for developing countries is to be able to manage your debt to be below 60% of your GDP, and right now we are at the border. Our debt-to-GDP ratio beginning 2020-2021 is at the range of 60% to 62%. So, it’s a challenge for the economic managers to actually manage the debt-to-GDP ratio. Meaning every year, with respect to deficit, there are two approaches: either rationalize your spending so that you don’t incur additional deficit, or increase your revenue collection to be able to reduce your deficit.

And this is our national government debt. It has been increasing, significantly increasing, beginning 2021. And the problem with debt is—there’s nothing wrong with borrowing, as long as we can ensure that what we borrow is productive in such a way that, even if the future generation will be paying for this debt, that there will be economic gains for them too. So, it’s very important how we spend the money. Are we investing the money that we borrow, are we investing them so that there will be economic, social growth and development in the future. 

But this is the fiscal deficit of the Philippines beginning 1986. So, fluctuating po siya. 1986, significant fiscal deficit. Maybe JC can elaborate on this because he focuses on economic history. But that’s when a lot of debt were maturing; the ones that we incurred during Marcus’ time were paying very high interest on this debt that we incurred. So, that’s the 1986 to 1990. And then we had the financial crisis, the Asian financial crisis. And then the latest one, if you see the debt 2021-2022, that’s the pandemic. And that’s why for me, it was really a big issue. We can see that we needed a lot of money, we needed to mobilize a lot of money to manage the pandemic at that time; and yet, [former] President Duterte decided to significantly increase his confidential and intelligence fund at that time. So, prioritization, it’s not just an issue this year, but it’s been an issue of the previous administration also, but I’m happy that now everyone is aware of the budget issue and everyone should be monitoring this every year.

So, this one summarizes the national government fiscal program. If you look at our annual revenue, it’s projected to increase. Our annual revenue, this is the money that’s flowing to the government, has two components, the tax revenue and the non-tax revenue. But as you can see, we are very dependent on our tax revenue. These are the money that’s being collected by the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs. So, our dependency ranges from 90-96 percent of total revenue comes from tax revenue. We have non-tax revenues and these are contributions of government corporations. Or if we have—in other countries, if they have natural resources like oil, minerals, it is recorded as non-tax revenue. So in the case of the Philippines, we have significant potential. As JC mentioned, the extractive sector is also one of my interests. So if we are maximizing the revenue from resources like mining, that could have contributed to the non-tax revenue of the government. Every year also—and I think this is relevant— government-owned and controlled corporations are mandated to remit dividends to the national government. So, various laws have already required them to remit the dividends and they’re reflected as non-tax revenues. Again, related to the budget, several issues were raised on why in the 2024 General Appropriations Act, there is this provision that was inserted mandating the Department of Finance to do cash sweep, meaning if GOCCs (Government-Owned and Controlled Corporations) have surplus funds, new concept formulated by Congress, that the DOF can collect that money to contribute to financing the different programs and projects; that’s the controversial PhilHealth fund that was swept. So, out of the 90 billion, was it 90 billion? 60 billion was already with the Department of Finance, and then we filed the case and we had the POR issued so that the remaining balance of what DOF was targeting remains at the PhilHealth until the issue is resolved. That provision that was inserted in the GAA 2024 was also used to collect money from our Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation (PDIC). This money is intended to protect the money that we keep in our banks. ‘Yun ‘yung insurance ng mga deposit natin. So, just in case magkabank run or magkaproblema ‘yung bangko na tinataguan natin ng money natin, ito ‘yung portion, ito ‘yung magfifinance noong portion ng ibabalik sa’tin. So, it’s sort of questionable why Congress would insert such provision when there are already existing laws that mandate them, that if they have profit, they have to remit the dividends. So if they’ve already remitted their dividends, what else is government getting from these agencies, especially PDIC? This needs to be further examined, and maybe for another lecture also. But for the case of PhilHealth, PhilHealth is not required to remit dividends because there’s very clear mandate under our National Health Insurance Act that, if there’s excess money or if there’s extra fund for PhilHealth beyond the reserve requirement, there are only two things that PhilHealth can do. It’s either expand the services that they’re providing us or refund us the excess money. But then DOF, based on its quote-unquote brilliant computation of a surplus fund—I’ll explain to you why I say it’s brilliant. All of a sudden discovered this surplus fund and decided to collect them and return them to the Treasury. So, for purposes of academic discussion—you know insurance works, right? It’s pooling. We collect premium from various individuals. If we don’t get sick, we don’t withdraw the money that we paid because that money is also used for those individuals who got sick, but their premium is lower than the cost that they incurred for getting sick. Risk pooling, and the more members there are, the lower the risk, the lower the premium, and that’s the idea behind the National Health Insurance Program. So the DOF, how did the DOF compute the surplus fund? Well, tayo, mga workers, we are required to pay our PhilHealth premium. It’s withheld from our monthly wages, but we have—as mandated by law, it’s government’s responsibility to finance the premium of indigents, senior citizens, and officials of Sangguniang Barangay and SK, I think, and PWDs. So, the government is required to pay their premium counterpart, and this premium should be sourced, according to our syntax law, from the 40 percent collection of excise tax on tobacco and sugary beverages. So, our law is very clear on the earmarking that 40 percent of these taxes will be used as payment for premium. So, what has been happening—I did not include the graph—for the past years? Since it was formulated, the government has been remitting to PhilHealth the accurate amount in terms of share, except beginning 2023, when it decided to reduce its counterpart contribution. So, it’s also another legal question. Does the government have that power not to follow the law that they formulated, that this money should be earmarked? Okay, so the decrease in PhilHealth counterpart of the government started 2023. 2024, it was reduced by 50 billion, and that 50 billion, as explained by the Department of Budget and Management, was transferred to this medical assistance for indigent patient program of the DOH. And then in 2025, as you’ll see later, they decided to give zero subsidy. They did not give their counterpart premium. Why is the government doing this? It’s part of the strategy. 

Because when Secretary Recto joined the Department of Finance, his commitment is that we’re not gonna impose new taxes. We’re going to improve revenue collection. And there’s also this statement that we are not going to increase our borrowing or we’re going to limit our borrowing. So to manage that perception, no new taxes. We’re going to manage our borrowing. Where are we going to source our money? So we’re just going to get the GOCC money. We’re getting PhilHealth, we’re getting PBIC. That’s what they’re trying to do. 

Going back to the two previous slides, sorry. So here we can see the deficit at the bottom as a percent of GDP. This is what we should be managing. 2023, it’s at 6%. 2024, it’s at 5.6%. In 2025, they’re hoping it’s going to be a 5.3%, et cetera, et cetera. Just going back to the non-tax revenue, and that’s why one of my key advocacies is really to increase the government share from mining. And when we talk of government share from mining, this is not just the overall money that we get from mining operation. Kasi, if you just increase the number of mining companies in the country, then definitely, an absolute value. You will have an increase in mining contribution, right? But if you will evaluate it, then evaluating mining contribution should be done on a per company basis, right? You’re going to look at how much each company, how much are we getting as a profit share for each operation? And that should be the strategic approach in terms of increasing government share from mining. Later, I will explain the policy direction that we are pursuing on that aspect.

If we compare our tax effort, I think there’s validity in terms of what Secretary Recto is saying with respect to tax administration. When we are trying to improve our revenue, there are two aspects: one is either to identify new taxes, increase the rate, or second, improve the administration, to plug the leakages. So if we compare our tax effort with other countries, our tax effort is at the mid part, still lower compared to Thailand and Vietnam. It’s 13% of our GDP. And our revenue effort is quite low; it’s at 14% compared to the total revenue over GDP of Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, even lower than Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, and Malaysia. So there’s a lot of room to improve in our revenue management.

This is the debt distribution. So we are borrowing money to finance our annual operation. It was a big issue before because a huge portion of our debt comes from external borrowing. So when we borrow abroad, we become vulnerable to exchange rate fluctuation. So when we realized that, there was a significant effort in the 2000s to actually reduce external debt and focus on domestic debt. So now majority, I think around 70%, 80% of our debt are domestic borrowings compared to external. But it’s not always good also because when you’re borrowing domestically, you’re crowding out the money that should be available also for your local companies; you’re competing with local companies in terms of access to resources, and that can drive the cost of borrowing up if the government competes at the local level. So that’s also a consideration. It can have a negative economic effect. 

So going back, sabi ni Recto, “…no new taxes until the end of Marco’s term”. Obviously, a few months ago, he changed his statement. There will be new taxes. The motor vehicle—MVUC (Motor Vehicle User’s Charge) is being proposed to be adjusted. There will be some changes in some of the financial taxes, financial transactions.

But my problem is—so we look at the macro, we have increasing deficit. We need to increase our revenue—our expenditure is increasing; and therefore, we need to find new sources of money if we don’t want to decrease our spending. A while ago, I was discussing about Create More. Well, at the end of the term of President Duterte, there’s this law called Create. Part of that law is to rationalize the incentives that we are giving industries. When we say incentives, these are exemptions from paying corporate income tax for several years. This is a thinking that if you give incentives, investments will come in, but we have to realize also that there are various types of investments, and not all investments need incentives. For example, market-seeking investors, meaning they come to the country because they want to sell and tap the domestic market. So if a company comes to the Philippines to sell their shampoo and compete with our firms that are producing shampoo in the country, should you give that company incentives? No, because you’re putting your domestic companies at a disadvantage, right? So you don’t just give incentives just because it’s a multinational company that will invest dollars in the country. So if you’re the President, you should be rationalizing it. So that’s what happened. Create mandated the review of investments and rationalize the decision to provide incentives for companies. You look at how much they’re going to invest, the size of employment that they’re committing, and if they’re able to meet their commitment, they get incentives. If they’re not able to deliver on their commitment on how much employment they’re going to create, then the incentives are suspended. So ‘yun ‘yung nangyayari. Another example, if companies are coming here to invest in the mining sector, do you provide incentives? No, because the minerals are here. They’re not going to move to Cambodia when the nickel and gold and copper are in the country. So it means the government has a greater bargaining power to tax and demand royalty because the resources are unique in the country. So that’s what you call locational investors; they go there because of the location of the resources available in the location. And what is very interesting, and this is a potential source of revenue for the countries because, as we transition—the energy transition that is needed to meet our due to climate change, the demand for this transition minerals is greater than the available supply of minerals. So when the demand is greater than supply, we know that prices will increase. And if prices are increasing, if your government or kung ikaw ‘yung business partner, ‘di ba mas gusto mo mas malaki ‘yung share sa profit, especially if you own the resources, right? So parang dapat nakakakita na ng dollar si Secretary Recto dito because there is a solution to where he can source additional revenue for government. So going back to Create More, what happened? This administration decided to relax the policy of rationalizing incentives, returning the function of just giving incentives to various economic zones. So it nawater down ‘yung transparency and accountability in providing incentives. This is a huge opportunity for rent-seeking because there’s no more oversight in terms of—or just weak oversight in terms of accounting for incentives or negative tax, kasi the reason why we have to take that into account is because all companies are mandated to pay taxes, and these taxes are used to provide services for the people. If you don’t make them pay taxes, then we have to make sure there’s alternative to what could have been spent to provide services for the Filipino people. But because of that, I think the government should report to us how much would be the revenues that would be eroded because of this new law, Create More. Now there’s another bill that is being rushed in Congress right now, House Bill 11360. In the excise tax, and this is our source of PhilHealth Fund, every year there’s a provision that it should be adjusted by 5% because of inflation. Kasi ‘yung tac po natin sa tobacco a specific tax, hindi siya percentage. So it’s a specific tax, so every year it has to be adjusted by 5%; and then lo and behold, some congressman has a proposal to suspend the 5% adjustment for 2026. Who will benefit from that? The money that we could have collected from this excise tax is already part of the projection kanina of the DOF, on the potential revenue that we should be collecting in the next years, but there’s this proposal to suspend. And you know that syntax is not just about revenue, it’s about managing how people consume tobacco because they have negative effects on our health; that’s the purpose of syntax. So if you suspend the increase in syntax, who would benefit from it? Definitely not the public, right, because there’s no new additional revenue, tobacco products will be cheaper. Benefit in the sense that those who are addicted to cigarettes will now buy cheap cigarettes. And the funny thing is this proposal is being floated because we have a lot of illicit tobacco floating around now. There are cheap tobaccos that are not being taxed; but from a rational perspective, it’s not a problem of taxation because even if you suspend, you are still taxing and it’s still higher than those untaxed, right? And if you have illegal tobacco floating around, I don’t think it’s a taxation problem, it’s a tax administration, it’s a regulation, it’s a police problem. So the solution that’s being floated does not address the problem that we are facing. This has evolved now, this proposal. Instead of just suspending it for 2026, the proposal now is to reduce the adjustment to 2% when the year is odd and then 4% if the year is even. So this is being rushed, and I’m not going to be surprised if maging batas ito because this is being supported by tobacco industry, and you know who are supporters of tobacco industry among legislators who are now holding different positions in government. Check niyo na lang ‘yung history of syntax deliberations in the Senate so you will know who are champions of the tobacco industry. Mining fiscal regimes I’ve mentioned. Based on my own study, and I’ve published this, that the effective tax rate, how much we are getting as profit share from the mining company, it ranges from just about 30 to 40%, 30% actually, 30-35%. This is net profit. It accounts for all payments given by companies to the government. This is not just royalty; it includes all taxes. So if you are the owner, in our constitution, we are the owner of the minerals. So the minerals do not belong doon sa community; it belongs to the Filipino people, and the government represents us, right? So kahit na nasa Metro Manila tayo, may share tayo doon sa minerals na hinuhukay sa Surigao. But some companies do not pay royalty. Legally, the royalty represents our share from mining. So in some mineral reservation areas, companies pay 5% of gross as royalty; but in other areas, non-mineral reservation—most of these companies are copper and gold mines—do not pay royalty. So we were actually thinking of going to the court and questioning the legality of these contracts because as owner of minerals, we are supposed to get the share from mining operation, and that’s why there’s this initiative to amend the existing law, to comply with the constitutional requirement. But the proposal is now to collect royalty from non-mineral reservation based on profit. Theoretically, it’s good because it’s progressive; but in an industry that is opaque kasi nga expertise, hindi naman shineshare ng government. So there’s very, very weak monitoring of the mining operation in the country. Then taxing based on profit is not really ideal for the country. The better strategy would be to have a mixed approach. You tax based on profit for corporate income, and you tax based on the revenue for government share so that you are guaranteed a share from the extraction of minerals even if there’s zero accounting profit. What do I mean by zero accounting profit? In the mining sector, in the most profitable years of the mining sector—normally it happens in the first five years of operation—companies are also given the incentive to do accelerated depreciation. It means that, for investments that they’ve purchased, heavy machinery, et cetera, et cetera, they can accelerate the depreciation as opposed to just straight line depreciation. If it has a 25-year lifespan, you just divide it by 25 years. Your annual depreciation, ‘yun ‘yung ipapasok mo as cost. If it’s accelerated, you can just divide it by five and then—so what will happen would be a significant increase in operating cost for the first five years when the mine is most profitable. So when it happens, it’s possible for companies to actually declare zero accounting profit. So when there’s zero accounting profit and if your royalty is based on profit, what do you get? Zero (laughs). I don’t know why government does it. I don’t think the government does not know this; they know this, ‘di ba? Except that policies are shaped by interests, and I think public interest is less powerful than private interest, right? So what is the solution that’s being proposed? Profit-based royalty and if zero daw yung profit, it’s based on revenue but the rate is 0.001% of gross revenue. So what is that, 0.001%? And the Department of Finance is saying, yes, we are expecting additional revenue from this. Oo naman, we will expect additional revenue. Why? Because the very cheap tax will invite a lot of mining companies in the country and if we are very friendly, we are going to open all these mines and they’re going to pay taxes. So yes, there’s going to be new taxes, but is it fair? That’s the ultimate question, and we’re not even talking of the negative effects, social, environmental, climate, right? Is it fair? Another important, another lecture also but another important aspect of this really is maximizing the benefit. Other countries like Indonesia, beginning 2012, already banned the export of raw minerals, ‘yung lupa. For those who are familiar with nickel mining in the country, lupa po ‘yung hinukay natin. Hinukay yung lupa nilagay sa barge dinala sa China. In Indonesia, they’ve banned that and they’ve required companies to set up processing so that they can link it to their manufacturing. You maximize the resources that you have. So now Indonesia has the processing, and now they have—they’re beginning their industry for batteries to support the renewable energy transition. Tayo, naka nganga pa rin. We haven’t decided on what we’re going to do with the minerals. You know why? Because it’s more profitable for companies to export soil because the government cannot monitor how much minerals are really in those soils. They can under-declare their tax liability, right? And so up to now, we don’t have policy. We’re not linking it. We don’t have the supply—the value chain to maximize the minerals that we are getting. And why is that? As I said, policies are shaped by interests. And who are the interests that are prioritized here? The interests of miners who are also politicians. And who’s the biggest miner politician in the country? Parang recitation, ‘no? Speaker Romualdez, right? His family owns the oldest mining company in the country; and that’s why despite our fiscal position, the need for additional revenue, the need to find money to finance this expenditure, this is the direction that the government is taking. I’m sorry to dampen your Saturday morning, but that’s the revenue management side. 

So that’s the revenue side. The problem is we need to mobilize money so that we don’t need to borrow—hindi na madadagdagan ang burden ng future generation sa pagbabayad ng utang; pero ito na nga, may mga opportunities. And yet, if we are not monitoring legislation, some interests—some individual interests are prioritized; definitely not public interest. Okay. Now, how is this money allocated? ‘Yung mga kinita at inutang. 

Basic accounting. If you’re running an office, you classify your expenses based on personnel expenses, ‘yung pampasuweldo, the operating expense, financial expenses, ‘yung mga binabayaran mong utang, and your financial services, and then capital outlays. So I looked at it and compared it to the revenue that government is collecting. Personal expenses, ito ‘yung pampasuweldo ng mga—sa’tin ‘yung mga employees ng government; that’s about 38% of our revenue. MOOE is about 52%. MOOE is the Maintenance and Operating Expenses, and then financial expenses is 18%. If you add personnel, MOOE, and financial, that’s the total current operating expenditure, meaning this is the total amount of money that we need to do the daily operation of government. If you compare the total amount of money for 2025, that’s 5 trillion MOOE. Our revenue is only 4.6 trillion. So total operating expenditure is 108% of our revenue. What does that mean? Nangungutang na po tayo para patakbuhin ‘yung gobyerno natin. We’re not even talking of long-term investment. We are talking of borrowing money to finance our daily needs, and this is bad fiscal management. Dati, hindi na nakakatulog ‘yung mga economic managers natin kasi ito ‘yung household mo. Ibig sabihin, ‘yung araw-araw mong kita, hindi enough ipara isustain ‘yung pang araw-araw mong pangangailangan; you’re not even investing on human capital growth and development. So this is worrisome. 

And then given that, how are we allocating the money? This is the controversial bicameral reallocation. Comparing how the bicameral conference committee deviated from the third reading, the one that underwent deliberation in the House of Representatives. So there’s the controversial PhilHealth fund that was reduced. There’s also the DSWD, 94 billion, 74 billion from PhilHealth. These are the ones—‘yung mga nasa taas po—‘yung mga nawalan ng pera, nabawasan ng Bicam. Kasama diyan ‘yung CHED, National Irrigation Authority, Department of Agriculture, DOLE was reduced, Department of Transportation by 18 billion, DEPED, AFP Modernization, and the Personal Benefit Fund. What were significantly increased by the bicameral committee is the Unprogrammed Appropriation, DPWH, Congress, Defense, State Colleges and Universities, Local Government Support Fund, and the Office of the President. Ang nilagay ko lang po dito ‘yung mga at least, nag-increase ng 1 billion pesos. What is interesting here is, for example, the significant increase in Unprogrammed Appropriations. There are three general classifications po ng budget. One is the Programmed Appropriation, which is a portion of the budget that has a guaranteed fund. Guaranteed revenues are earmarked for these programs and projects that are guaranteed to be implemented because there’s money; and then, there’s this portion of the budget that is allocated for debt servicing, which we have to pay because they’re automatically appropriated; and then, there’s this portion of Unprogrammed Appropriation, meaning if government has additional revenue funding for the year, then that’s when items under the Unprogrammed Appropriation will be funded. So if there are new taxes, new loss on taxes, then government expects new revenue. So that’s when Unprogrammed will be funded. So meaning it’s not really a priority because there’s no guaranteed fund to finance it. And ‘yun nga po ‘yung interesting because in 2024, what the Bicameral Conference Committee did is to transfer the big-ticket projects, the infrastructure projects of the President transferred to Unprogrammed and included as source of funding the PhilHealth Fund and the PBIC and other GOCC surplus. So it has been happening for the past years under the Marcos administration where Unprogrammed Appropriation has been increasing. For DPWH, the significant increase is because of the increase in allocation for small projects. This is what they call a convergence program; very flexible fund to finance small local projects like multipurpose buildings, flood controls, roads, bridges. So diyan ‘yung mga sinasabing insertions of the House of Representatives. And then Congress, they increased their budget, both the Senate and the House of Representatives by 15 billion. DMD, national security. 

This is the comparison naman of the—kasi in the previous slide, if we just look at the third reading and the Bicam, hindi natin makikita, that from the very beginning there are already agencies that were targeted for budget reduction. So I compared what the President submitted and what came out of the Bicameral. So as you can see, from the very beginning, noong nag deliberation pa lang sa House of Representatives, na reduce na ‘yung DOTR by 92 billion pesos. So kanina kasi, if you go back to the previous slides, parang kaunti lang ‘yung nabawas sa DOTR. See? 18 billion lang pala. But if you look at the original proposal and what came out of the GAA, next slide, it’s actually 92 billion. And this is the big-ticket projects, the subway that we are dreaming of. The other day, I was chatting with Professor Rejidor, and he was saying that in Asia, we are the first to have a subway plan, which would be in the Guinness Book of World Records, the longest plan to be implemented because other countries already have their subway. ‘Yung sa’tin, plan pa rin up to now. We were the first to plan and the last to implement. So the money, inutang natin, because even if these projects are foreign funded, they don’t get implemented unless we provide our counterpart funding. Counterpart funding includes feasibility study, the payment for eminent domain, the land that needs to be obtained and the infrastructure projects. If the government doesn’t fund that, these projects cannot be implemented. You know, the bigger issue here, and we haven’t even discussed and examined this, is because these are foreign funded projects and they have been approved already, tumatakbo na ‘yan, utang ‘yan, nag-iinterest na ‘yan. Binabayaran na natin ‘yung interest pero hindi na-iimplement. Is that good financial management? Obviously, no kasi pag nangungutang ka sa business mo, gusto mo ginamit mo na agad ‘yung pera na ‘yun, pinapatakbo mo na para ‘yung kita pangbayad utang. Sa’tin, programmed lahat ng mga big ticket projects na ‘yan. Brilliant? Anong grade ibibigay natin diyan? So ito nga po, sa NEP pa lang, bago dumating sa Bicam, bawas na ang DOTR. Ito ‘yung mga natarget na agencies: DOTR, DEPED, DSWD, DA, the OVP, DOST, Housing, and NCIP. ‘Yung mga nadagdagan from NEP to GAA, Senate, DOJ, DTI, CHED, DICT, OP, DOLE—ito ‘yung mga TUPAD projects—House of Representatives, 17 billion, DND, DOH, this is the MAIP, Medical Assistance for Indigent Filipinos, and the BPWH, 214 billion pesos.

Ito ‘yung mga—mayroon ring mga favorite GOCCs and funds na nadagdagan. The National Irrigation—because project din ‘yan e—nadagdagan sila by 26 billion. Local Government Support Fund, MMDA, nadagdagan; MEA, PEZA, PPA, Cultural Center—yay! Natuwa ako, actually, when I saw that. They gave CCP an additional 1 billion pesos. And then, of course, the Heart Center and all the national health centers natin nadagdagan. But these are the GOCCs.

Ayan. So ‘yung mga winners and losers, kung mayroong mga GOCCs na special funds na nadagdagan, may mga GOCCs na special funds na significantly nabawasan, like ‘yung Pension and Gratuity Fund, PhilHealth, Personnel Benefit Fund, AFP Modernization, Disaster Risk Reduction Fund by 10 billion, Small Business Committee, [and] National Power Corporation. So naman ‘yung mga nadagdagan na GOCCs and special funds.

Ito lang, para lang ‘yung kwento kasi sometimes iniisip natin Bicam ‘yung—evil Bicam—na nagbawas at nagdagdag; but actually, in some instances, for example, if you look at DOLE, the original proposal of DOLE is 45 billion. It underwent deliberation in Congress and Congress decided to actually increase it by almost 24 billion pesos. That’s to test the other programs. But then Bicam actually reduced the increase, and reduced it to 51 billion. So net effect increased  pa rin by about 6 billion, but not as huge as was originally intended by the House of Representatives. But look at DPWH. Initially, it was reduced by Congress from 898 to 825, but the Bicam decided to increase it by 214 billion pesos. So the budget of DPWH is actually 1,113,000,000. So CHED was increased by 30 billion, from 30 million to 60 billion through the usual congressional process, but the Bicam actually decided to reduce the increase. So it was only increased by 3 billion. Kasi nga—and that’s why—the reason why I’m presenting this is public accountability and monitoring is very important; not just the Bicam, but the whole process. And as I was explaining, when the NEP was formulated, the budget was allocated based on the performance of agencies. So when they underwent the legislative process, what was the thinking of giving DOLE an additional 23 billion pesos? If we’re looking at performance, if they’re going to be able to deliver their programs and projects, what was the rationale? We don’t know. The DPWH from 898 to 1 trillion, when DPWH is the one saying na their backlog in terms of implementing flood control projects, they’re only able to implement 60 percent of flood control; and yet, government is giving it 1 trillion. OP, originally 10 billion, naghearing, it’s still 10 billion, but then after the Bicam it’s 5.8 billion. So what I’m saying is there are various pressure points in terms of adjusting the budget. There are lucky ones, meaning lucky, kung ano ‘yung inapplying nila, ‘yun din ‘yung nakuha nila; I did not include it here anymore. But I just wanted to point out that there are agencies that are favored because they keep on getting additional money, and there are agencies that are not favored in the sense that priority projects were placed under unprogrammed or they’re reduced like the DEPED. 

Malapit na matapos. These ones are the agencies that were reduced—the budget was reduced from their proposal. That’s the NCIT—typo yung B—Housing, DOST, OVP, DA, DSWD, DEPED, and again, the biggest one is on the transportation, which has something to do with ‘yung mga transportation projects natin. In fact, I was discussing with stakeholders from the transport sector and they have zero budget for contracting, transport contracting now. Zero. 

I’m almost done. And then here, we question about the government priorities because the constitution mandates that education should be prioritized, and this is how government is justifying the prioritization of education. They presented the summary or summation of the EDUC sector which includes budget of the local government academy, budget of the PMA, Philippine National Police, Public Safety College. And for me, ang interesting nga dito is if you’re going to allocate budget of education, ‘di ba you should evaluate it based on whether it’s achieving the SDG 4, basic education access. So inisa-isa ko siya, like PMA, what is the primary objective of PMA? It’s about national security, public safety, PNP, ‘di ba? Their primary goal is not access to basic education or continuing education. Pwede pa ‘yung TESDA because that’s continuing education, but the others, hindi. So if you remove all of that, obviously public works will have a bigger budget than education. So again, this is an important legal question that will be a subject of several cases before the Supreme Court, and maybe a high time for the Supreme Court to decide and define what we mean by prioritizing education.

For this one, I was tinkering with the budget since I encoded it already, and I decided to look at the regional allocation and whether there’s correlation between regional budgets of agencies and poverty incidence. So it’s negative, meaning government agencies allocate more budget in areas where there’s lower incidence of poverty except for DSWD, but then this is correlation and data on region. But I just find it interesting that if you’re going to allocate for government spending, shouldn’t you be prioritizing poverty alleviation? So I was hoping to see a more positive correlation, more budgets being allocated, more government spending to address poverty. But this is for further studies. Just quickly because these are the scatterplot. This is for agriculture.

This is DSWD, so it’s slightly increasing. And then for public works and highways, I was hoping to see a positive relationship because government should be investing infrastructures in poorer areas so that they become more accessible, there will be more investment, but it’s negatively correlated. I think what is important also, if this study is pursued, is to look at the national agency budget because these are regional budget. Some of the money are allocated at the national level, but also for distribution at the local, so that would require additional scrutiny. 

Last na, promise. Yeah, so general observations. What did we see in the 2025 budget? We’ve seen the deprioritization of education increase, significant increase in funds for small local infrastructure projects, which we are seeing as a return of the pork barrel, increase in programs, funding for programs that promote patronage politics like AKAP, MAIFIP, TUPAD because these are the programs, social programs that have no clear targeting mechanism, no clear outcomes, no clear framework on what it intends to do. And then the problem is there’s a reduction in funding for institutionalized social protection programs like PhilHealth and 4Ps. So the worrisome aspect is that the general policy direction is towards promoting patronage politics as opposed to strengthening institutions that will help provide social protection programs. And then this one, the big ticket projects that the president keeps on mentioning in his Sona are now under the unprogrammed appropriation. Not only do these projects have no guaranteed funding, they are approved foreign loans that are already incurring interest expense. 

And then, the veto action of the president highlights that, yeah, maybe the president is responding to public pressure, but if you scrutinize what he really vetoed, that’s 26 billion of the one trillion budget of DPWH. That’s very tiny compared to the additional. They give DPWH 200 billion plus, and he vetoed 26 billion. And then he said he’s vetoing items in the unprogrammed appropriations, which include the 50 billion 4Ps. So he vetoed 168 billion of unprogrammed. But as we said, it’s already unprogrammed. There’s no money allocated for it. So vetoing the unprogrammed has actually no effect in terms of fiscal management. Then, as I mentioned, resurgence of the pork barrel and the quick, dirty work on the correlation between budget and poverty incidents. The big question now is, “Does the budget still reflect our development agenda?” And for me, the answer is no.

I think that’s my last slide. I will end my presentation there, and we can have an open forum. Thank you.

Dr. Punongbayan
Thank you very much, Dr. Magno, for that excellent and enlightening discussion of the budget issues. So I think our participants—actually, there are many participants online, and I’m looking forward to the discussion and the questions they will pose. But before we go to them and our participants in the audience now in the PSSC auditorium, I hope our participants realize from Dr. Magno’s lecture that the national budget is actually a scaffold against which you can understand many social issues that we are confronting right now. For example, you can link to the budget issues, PhilHealth, ayuda, etc., even the mining sector, the elections. So it’s really quite crucial for us to understand the budget. And as Dr. Magno mentioned, I think one of the key takeaways is policies are shaped by interests. So if you want to understand the priorities of the government and our leaders, then the budget is a good lens by which you can understand or decode their priorities. And at the end of the day, I think we all agree that it’s all about accountability. So even if there are budget shenanigans going on, the most important thing is to make our leaders as accountable as possible. So before we go to the participants, to the questions, let me post some questions of my own as the moderator, just to get it started. Cielo, why do you think there’s an explosion of budget issues right now? Because we’ve had some problems with the budget before, but why do you think specifically under the Marcos administration, there’s been an explosion of all of these issues to the extent that this has been picked up by media and has captured the interests of many Filipinos? 

Dr. Magno
Well, to be honest, I think we have a lot of civil society organizations and NGOs who’ve been monitoring the budget and advocating for budget transparency, participation. But this time it became an issue, to be honest, it’s because of a confidential fund. And that now the divorce of VP Sara and the president, the budget has become an issue because one, the confidential fund is part of the budget. And then because of the corruption issues, we have to scrutinize it. And the question why we have confidential fund, it’s a good thing that they scrutinize it, but I think the effort of Congress is half-baked. Because if we’re going to talk about confidential fund, we should be scrutinizing all confidential funds, not just the vice president. But it doesn’t mean that just because we’re scrutinizing one confidential fund, that the questions being raised about this confidential fund is not valid. So all these questions are definitely valid. But at the same time, it became very political because while we have valid concerns about the budget, supporters of VP Sara are now using these questions, the concerns of the budget to raise some questions about the credibility of the current administration. So these are legitimate issues. But I think what we have to do as a common tao, kasi naiipit tayo sa awayan ng dalawang malaking political groups, is to look at our own interests, ‘di ba, and to speak up against the corruption that’s happening and that’s associated with both camps. But that’s why it’s mainit. It’s because of the bangayan at paggamit ng both camps on this money that are all related to the budget. 

Dr. Punongbayan
And it’s quite amazing actually how Dr. Magno herself has spearheaded social efforts. If you listen to the news a few weeks ago, there were these protests along EDSA, and Cielo was part of some of that as well in organizing that. So it’s very good to engage as many people as possible. But given the budget issues, so many cases have been filed already by various groups about the especially controversial 2025 budget. Can you give us an overview, Dr. Magno, of the different cases? What are the main arguments in these cases? And are there other cases that are in the pipeline? 

Dr. Magno
So our team is also reviewing the budget, and we’re also preparing for our own version of a petition. But I think the important items that have to be raised before the Supreme Court is on the prioritization of infrastructure over education because our constitution is very clear that education has to be prioritized. While there were decisions before of the Supreme Court saying there was a time when debt servicing has more—Congress allocated more money for debt servicing than education and the Supreme Court said it’s okay. So now I think we have to go back to the Supreme Court, to ask the Supreme Court to revisit its appreciation of what we mean by prioritizing education as a sector. That’s first. The second important constitutional question is on the zero subsidy that government provided to PhilHealth because we have existing laws specifically mandating Congress to allocate a specific amount of money for PhilHealth. And if you reduce it to zero, does that mean that the General Appropriations Act amended these existing laws, which is actually prohibited because the General Appropriations Act is a general law; it cannot amend a specific law. So questions like that, especially on special funds where existing laws specify how much money should be allocated. It seems like Congress has been reducing what should be allocated based on the mandate of existing laws. So those are being reviewed also. The question of blank items in a bicameral conference committee report I think is also a very important legal question. And then another important legal question is on the role of congressmen and politicians in implementing ayuda programs like the MAIP, TUPAD, AKAP, etc. Because as all of us know, you cannot tap, for example, the MAIP without the guarantee letter of politicians. MAIP is when you ask for a guarantee letter so that you can get additional health support if you’re hospitalized, and you’re not able to access that unless your congressman will give you the guarantee letter. And this is a clear violation of a separation of mandate because that’s the project execution already. Congress should not have a role in terms of that. So I think we can go to court questioning why we need the approval of this congressman and senator in implementing projects like ACAP and MAIP. So these are, I think, the big questions that we can bring before the Supreme Court. 

Dr. Punongbayan
Miss Cielo, what is the end goal of all of these Supreme Court cases? Do you foresee that the Supreme Court will be declaring parts of the budget unconstitutional or even the whole of it? And what will be the implication of that? I think President Marcos said in an interview that the government will have to shut down (laughs) at some point if the Supreme Court decides that way. But what are your thoughts about it? 

Dr. Magno
I think the president should resign if he shuts down the government operation just because the Supreme Court declared the budget unconstitutional, right? I thought when we were attending the deliberation of the first hearing of the Supreme Court on PhilHealth, the government was justifying the reason why it’s getting PhilHealth money as a creative approach. So if President Marcos is saying this administration is creative, then they should find creativity in terms of fixing the budget if it’s declared unconstitutional. Actually, hindi naman kailangan ng creativity e. It goes back to Congress and Congress has to amend and fix the—cure the problem that the Supreme Court will identify, so that we can have a better budget that reflects the development agenda of the public. But for the meantime, if it’s declared unconstitutional and Congress does not convene, then the 2024 budget takes effect. ‘Yung lumang budget ‘yung gagamitin. But if Congress will immediately convene and amend the 2025 budget, then we have an amended budget that should be better than the current one we have. 

Dr. Punongbayan
So we’ve talked about, Cielo, about the role of Congress as well as the role of the president. But what do you think is the role of the economic managers in all of this? Because they should be the ones, in fact, advising the president. And in fact, I remember before Christmas, they were kind of deliberating how best to respond to the budget issues. But what could have they done differently? Or how should they have advised the president so that we can avoid all of these budget controversies? 

Dr. Magno
And that’s what I’ve been wondering because the budget is a long process, almost a year. Economic managers took the lead in preparing the budget; they’ve forecasted the revenue, forecasted how much money we should be borrowing, and this is where we should be allocating so that it’s consistent with our development plan. And then there’s a congressional deliberation, and the executive is supposed to be participating in that deliberation. So it’s actually a surprise for the president to be acting surprised (laughs) when he received the budget. The economic managers, the executives, his cabinet members should be monitoring what’s going on in Congress. So we have a specific office for that, the PLLO, Presidential Legislative Liaison Office. We have the LEDAC (Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council) where the executive and Congress should be coordinating in terms of budget priorities. The speaker is the cousin of the president. Hindi ba sila nagttext? Wala bang family chat (laughs) on how the money should be prioritized? So it’s very disappointing to see that reaction that the economic managers and the president were surprised on the result of the budget when I think it means that then they should be exerting more effort in terms of monitoring, working with Congress, and defining the priorities that should be reflected in the budget. 

Open Forum

Dr. Punongbayan
Thank you. Thank you, Cielo. Now, let us open the floor to questions for our face-to-face participants as well as those online. For those participants attending on site, who would like to join the discussion, you may approach the microphones, as you can see. For those in Zoom, you may post your comments or questions in the chat box. And for those following us on Facebook Live, you may post your insights or questions in the comments section. And in fact, some questions have already trickled in. Now before you post your question, please introduce yourself briefly, stating your name and institution. And please keep your insights or questions as concise and straightforward as possible. So maybe we can start with our participants on site. If any of you have any questions, please feel free to approach the microphones already. 

Dr. Magno
Comprehensive na daw ‘yung discussion ko because I went overtime (laughs).

Dr. Punongbayan
(laughs) I’m sure some questions have brewed in their minds. As well as those online, you can begin putting in your questions in the chat box. So anyone from the floor? Any questions for Dr. Magno about any aspect of it? Yes, go ahead.

Gina Lumauig
Good morning po. Good morning, Dr. Magno and Dr. Punongbayan. Gina Lumauig from the Philippines Communication Society. Siguro I’ll ask this because you mentioned it, and we’re affected also. ‘Yung subway nga, ‘di ba Guinness Book of World Records for the longest plan. How does that affect us now? Kung binawasan ‘yung budget ng DOTR? One, that’s the first. And second, how is it now that, apparently, the new secretary is Vince Dizon? May connection ba ‘yun? Thank you.

Dr. Magno
Hindi ako privy sa political rigodon. But what’s gonna happen is ‘yun nga, because there’s no counterpart, all these items are in the unprogrammed appropriation, then there will be delay in terms of the implementation of this PNR rehabilitation, this train that’s supposed to connect Metro Manila to Bicol, the subway. And as I mentioned, it’s also a problem because these are approved foreign projects, and they’re already incurring interest. So we’re already paying interest. And that’s why there’s also pressure for Secretary Recto to come up with the money to finance this. And that’s why they figured out that PhilHealth and the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation are potential money that we can get to finance these unprogrammed appropriations. And I think that’s why it’s important to talk about this because if we don’t know what’s going on. “Ay nagbabayad na pala tayo ng utang sa—utang na hindi pa natin napapakinabangan at na-iimplement”. There’s no public pressure. So what surprises me is they did this already in 2024, and we’ve already discussed this in 2024. Now why are you putting these big ticket projects in an unprogrammed appropriation? And yet it happened again in 2025. May explanation ka ba, James? 

Dr. Punongbayan
Wala rin e (laughs).

Dr. Magno
I don’t understand, and the pressure to find money happened in 2024; and yet, they did it again in 2025. And these are big ticket projects, capital outlays that we need to pump prime areas to create linkages between island provinces to lower the cost of operation in the country. If we want investment, we need to address the bad traffic in Metro Manila. But if we’re not prioritizing public transportation. What are we prioritizing? And that’s why this budget is scary because the priority is ayuda, the small projects were kitty projects of local governments. Kasi if you’re going to invest on infra, you invest on big infra projects with high returns, not waiting sheds or multipurpose buildings. 

Dr. Punongbayan
Related to that, Cielo, some people are saying that, maybe part of the Ayuda budget that has ballooned also in the 2025 budget, maybe part of that will be spent after the elections or even some of the hyperlocal infrastructure projects. Do you think that will happen or much of it will be before or in the run up to the elections? 

Dr. Magno
And I think this is where our role comes in, in terms of monitoring. That’s why I have been really lobbying for the disclosure of who really are receiving this ayuda money. Not only to trace if they’re real people, but also to trace whether they’re receiving the right amount of money. And this is the other part of the budget process, the audit. And as I said, there are various types of audit and I think this is where people’s audit should come in. In fact, COA has that project, people’s audit, and it used to be funded. ‘Di ko alam kung may budget pa ‘yung COA for this; but as I also mentioned, policies are shaped by interest. And if we, the public, will not be noisy and will not demand accountability, and will not demand disclosure, then we won’t be able to monitor if the budget is really working for our own interests. Politically, probably true that some of this ayuda money will be released before elections, especially if they’re saying this is election money, but we cannot know for sure. Actually, we can monitor maybe the SARO (Special Allotment Release Order) releases in the DBM website, but the two of us, it cannot just be the two of us because we’re talking of thousands of data. So it’s actually good for PSSC to engage on this topic because there are tons of data that we can analyze and that would require monitoring. 

Dr. Punongbayan
Thank you, Cielo. Any other questions? 

Dr. Magno
‘Yung sa SARO, talking about funding releases of the 2025 budget, you know what was the first to be released, right? The first SARO to be released under this GAA. Hulaan mo (directed towards Dr. Punongbayan). The SARO of the Confidential Fund of the President has been released already. 

Dr. Punongbayan 
(laughs) So there’s a lot of data to be monitored out there. Any other questions from the floor? Yes, ma’am. 

Memet Mañalac
Good morning. I’m Memet Mañalac. I’m representing Philippine Statistical Association Inc. On the unprogrammed appropriations, are these mainly reclassification from various agencies, and then lodged into unprogrammed appropriations? So these projects have already been identified. So in terms of accountability, if they have been reclassified from, for instance, DOTR to unprogrammed, who bears the accountability for, for instance, the completion, et cetera, of the project. And then, in the first place, why do they have to reclassify these projects from the identified agencies that they’re supposed to be overseeing the projects into unprogrammed? 

Dr. Magno
So in terms of accountability, the accountability remains to the mother agency. So for example, the transportation, still with the DOTR. For some events, the government finally found some money and decided to finance a subway. So it’s still with the DOTR. The only thing that happens with the unprogrammed is that it becomes less priority in terms of funding. And only when additional money were solicited by government, that’s when they get funding. But the problem is—so the big question is, okay, if the size of the pie is fixed, and then you move big ticket items that used to be funded under the NEP (National Expenditure Program), the proposed budget of the president, move to the unprogrammed, then it means funds have been freed up, right, from big ticket projects. They’ve been freed up to accommodate the significant increases in other agencies. So we gave up the money that’s supposed to fund our counterpart for big ticket projects to finance the increase in the budget for DPWH, the convergence projects for additional multipurpose buildings for Zumba (laughs), and the waiting shed na kahit umuulan nababasa tayo, and the farm to market roads, and the insertion of Congress of this AKAP program, 26 billion, additional TUPAD, additional MAIP. So all these increases, they need to be funded from somewhere. So that’s why these priority projects from other agencies were moved to the unprogrammed.

Dr. Punongbayan
It seems to be a recent invention, ‘diba, na parang before, as noted by our friend Zysa, there were just a few items in the unprogrammed appropriations; pero suddenly, in the past two or three years, there was an explosion of it. So parang, did lawmakers somehow discover that, actually, they can do this? And I think they got brazen, or parang, yeah ‘diba? They learned about it.

Dr. Magno
This administration really, you know, cutting the budget to PhilHealth, what should be given to PhilHealth, they’re not giving. And funny pa nga, because, oh, did I explain how the DOF computed the surplus? This is how they computed the surplus. That’s why I was making a quote of this brilliant computation. I was explaining risk pooling, kasi nga, if we contribute premium, it becomes a pooled fund. So if the government pays for the premium of the indigent, that contribution becomes part of the pooled fund. But what DOF did is, “Okay, this is how much money we’ve contributed, and this is how much money the indigent spent”. So the difference is surplus. Parang how can you say, “Okay, since the indigent sector only spends, let’s say, 500 million, and therefore, we’ve contributed, let’s say, 1 billion. The sector only spent 500 million, and therefore, there’s surplus of 500 million”. That’s not how it works. You know, if your economic managers think like that, they do not understand the basic of insurance, I think I will really, really worry, right? So that’s how they’re trying to justify it, that surplus is because this is only how much the indigent spent, which goes against basic insurance principle. 

Dr. Punongbayan
I think some of the economic managers need to sit in some of your courses, siguro, at UP School of Economics (laughs) as a refresher. Okay, I think we can take one more question from the floor before we go to our online participants. Any burning question? Yes, ma’am. 

Vene Veneracion
Good morning. Vene Veneracion from Philippine Political Science Association. May I hear your thoughts, Madam, with regard to the impeachment, and how the national budget and the confidential funds are actually related to that? Thank you. 

Dr. Magno
Well, I think there’s a strong basis for impeachment in terms of the misuse of the funds because the vice president clearly did not follow the procedure that was defined in terms of the use of confidential funds, particularly its liquidation. And as I’ve mentioned, with respect to confidential funds, they’ve already modified the requirement. This is a watered-down version of what we would normally expect in terms of COA auditing. And unfortunately, the vice president was not even able to comply with this watered-down mechanism. And the unfortunate part is that the liquidation involves bogus names. So this is clearly a misuse of people’s money, and clearly reflects a problem with respect to public trust. So I think there’s basis for impeachment, and it’s important that the Senate proceeds with the whole process immediately because that’s their mandate to do and provide the space for the vice president to defend herself in terms of the basis of impeachment that was filed by Congress. 

Dr. Punongbayan
Thank you. Thank you for those questions. I think at this point, we can pivot to some of the questions we have already received from our online participants. One of them, Anonymous, asked, “What policy or legislative measures can be introduced to correct the lack of regular government subsidy for failed health and ensure sustainable funding for universal health care?” 

Dr. Magno
Actually, the laws are already in place. Our syntax law earmarks 40% of proceeds from sugary beverages and tobacco products to finance the premium of our citizens that cannot contribute, cannot pay their premium. So that’s the socialized aspect of it. There’s a very clear mandate for PhilHealth to improve its services so that we can achieve universal health care. I think the problem is with respect to oversight and monitoring. Oversight and monitoring is because, for example, in the case of failed health, you have a GOCC. Ito na naman ‘yung isa kong pinagtatakahan e because the board of PhilHealth should function as the oversight body, monitoring PhilHealth, making sure that failed health does its job. And who sits in the board of failed health? The Secretary of Finance, the Secretary of Budget, the Secretary of Health, and they’re the ones getting the money of PhilHealth. E ‘di ba, kung hindi nga yan nagagastos ng PhilHealth, aren’t they the ones who should be monitoring whether PhilHealth is providing sufficient coverage for its members, how are the supply side of healthcare? Meaning, okay, we have the E-Konsulta Program, and we’re announcing it to everyone na, “Oh, you have this outpatient benefit, you can go get lab checks, etc., etc.”, basic primary care. But if there are only two providers in Quezon City, ‘di ba? Even if that project exists, the utilization will be low because there are only two providers, then the supply side also has to be fixed. So what are they doing as a board in terms of making sure the GOCC does its job? So I don’t think it’s the law that’s the problem because we have a law except that Congress decided not to follow the law that they formulated and that the executive is not doing its job of demanding accountability from government agencies. There are supposed to be independent representatives there from different sectors in PhilHealth. I hope there is greater accountability. There should be public reporting. Documents that are discussed in PhilHealth should be shared by the sectoral representatives so that we can make them accountable also, and we can participate in the discussion on the directions of PhilHealth. So I don’t think the gap is in the law. I think the gap is in oversight, accountability, and monitoring of PhilHealth.

Dr. Punongbayan
Related to that, can you tell us, Cielo, about the oral arguments in the PhilHealth Supreme Court case that happened maybe a week ago or a few weeks ago? Were the representatives of PhilHealth—I think the president and CEO was there—were they able to defend their case well before the justices in the oral arguments or not so much? 

Dr. Magno
Baka sabihin biased ako because I’m one of the petitioners, but I’m quite disappointed in the way failed health was answering the question because, for example, they are being asked on what their basis is in terms of forecasting their expenditure, and they’re referring to historical operational costs. When you’re talking of forecasting the expenditure, you cannot use old data because your population is maturing; new diseases emerge. Therefore, you have to refer to your statistical model to make sure that it’s accurate, and PhilHealth is saying that they have problems with their actuarial capacity because the forecast is very different from the utilization. But then if it’s very different, either your model is wrong or has to be improved or your implementation is problematic because if you’re going to model, you’re going to base it on a population profile. If you have an aging profile, then expenditure will be higher, et cetera, et cetera. But then as I said, if you only have two clinics to provide a service, of course the utilization will be low. So the difference between actual model and operation of failed health may not be on the accuracy of the model but on gaps in terms of operations, things like that. But the core of a government argument is not really legal. The foundation of what they’re saying as a justification to get the failed health money is not legal. They just said, “In a situation where we have economic challenges, we need creative approaches”; and for them, getting the PhilHealth money is one of the creative approaches. And for me, if we are going to dwell with creative approaches, then we become a lawless society, right? The reason why we have laws is for governments, and agencies, and citizens to follow and implement these laws. If we’re going to deviate from these laws to solve problems, then lawlessness start. And I don’t think the government should be the one advocating that. 

Dr. Punongbayan
I think this is an instance of creativity not being a good virtue (laughs). 

Dr. Magno
It can be creative and legal at the same time. 

Dr. Punongbayan
Yeah, okay, correct. Okay, we have another question from Iking from Facebook Live, “Until when could Congress pass a supplemental budget if it intends to augment certain items in the 2025 budget? Is it possible to pass a supplemental budget law while deliberating the 2026 national budget?”

Dr. Magno
I think it’s possible. I don’t remember the dates and the rules of Congress with respect to this; but I think they can, especially if there are excess money that can be aligned to finance projects. But the thing is the passage of supplemental budget has not been done recently. Because what they did is actually to have this unprogrammed appropriation as an approach. So instead of having supplemental budget, you already have identified unprogrammed items that will be prioritized if additional money emerges. So that’s why we haven’t been seeing legislation on supplemental budget. 

Dr. Punongbayan
MC Salinas from Facebook Live asks, “Paano kaya ginagamit ng NIA, National Immigration Authority, ang kanilang budget, knowing na ang dami nilang nasayang na projects?” So I guess may pinanghuhugutan si MC Salinas about NIA, in particular. 

Dr. Magno
Yeah, and this is where the COA reports should come in. And the COA reports are available online and we can download. Dati, hobby ko ‘yan e, binabasa ko ‘yung mga COA reports of local governments to see na, “Oh, this local government does not even have an annual investment plan.” How do you budget if you don’t have an annual investment plan? So I really urge the public to go to the COA website, download these COA reports, because there are very interesting stories, narratives, data that you will find that will explain. Like that question, how is NIA spending its money? What’s the priority? You can check it there. Sometimes they even have a performance report on how these agencies are doing their jobs. 

Dr. Punongbayan
From our colleague Jovi Dahanay of the Philippine Economic Society participating on Zoom, “I would like to know how much evidence-based policymaking is being practiced during the budget-making process. That is, agencies with poor disbursement continue having a high budget allocation like DPWH”.

Dr. Magno
Technically, there are rules under DBM that should be applied. And if they are strictly applied, then it becomes evidence-based, because DBM is monitoring how the process of disbursement of agencies, budget utilization; there are certain percentages that have to be followed in terms of efficiencies of agencies in utilizing their money. So it should be reflected. What I’m saying is rules exist in terms of budgeting and performance evaluation of agencies. I also know that there’s a—like in any other agency capacity, there’s a need to strengthen the capacity of DBM in doing this, but I think there’s effort for those performance indicators to be reflected in the agency budget that’s submitted to be part of the NEP. 

Dr. Punongbayan
An anonymous participant asks about the constitutional mandate that education should receive the lion’s share of the budget, “Can there still be adjustments or reallocations made in the 2025 budget to meet this constitutional mandate, while at the same time addressing gaps in quality, accessibility, and infrastructure in education?”

Dr. Magno
The president cannot reallocate the budget; it’s only Congress that has the mandate. So if the Supreme Court says that the current allocation for education is unconstitutional, then Congress has to re-open the budget, and to reallocate more money for education. And I think what will be important in this question before the Supreme Court is how we define education because apparently, for government, maybe they define it as capacity building. So if it’s capacity building, then all agencies have an education budget because all agencies have capacity building. But that would be ridiculous also because if you have, you know, from a policy perspective, if you have limited budget then you’ll have to prioritize and you prioritize based on country’s problems. The SDG is one of the indicators of what we should be prioritizing and that’s basic education. So I’m hoping that with this case that the Supreme Court will now really define some parameters on how to prioritize education as a sector. Is it just allocating more money, et cetera, et cetera? So it has to be defined. 

Dr. Punongbayan
Yeah, because before it was, it’s just a convention before, right? DepEd, CHED, TESDA, ito ‘yung mga agencies na pinagsasama-sama, pero there’s no hard and fast rule, actually, that guides Congress when it comes to this. So I guess this is an opportunity for the Supreme Court to lay that out. Now from Therese Torres of the Asian Institute of Journalism and Communication, “Good morning, Dr. Magno. How can academic institutions play a more active role in enhancing public discourse on national budget priorities, particularly when it comes to education funding? What are your thoughts on fostering collaboration among academic researchers, policymakers, or government agencies and civil society organizations to track the real impact of budget allocations on the quality of education?”

Dr. Magno
I think it’s a brilliant idea, and some of us are already doing it, and I think it has to be mainstream. So I really want to encourage the academic sector to occupy social media. I think we have to be more vocal. It’s not that we’re not doing anything about this. I think a lot of us are already doing significant study, project evaluation, monitoring, except that sometimes, the conversation is limited to the academic sector. So it’s high time that we share all these studies to the public, to government agencies, because these studies provide feedback in terms of efficiency on how these programs are being implemented. So definitely, partnership between the academics, civil society, and government is necessary; and with the presence of social media, it becomes more convenient for us to share our studies and expertise. 

Dr. Punongbayan
So at this point, I think we exhausted already the questions from online. From our participants here in the auditorium, do we have any more pressing questions that we want to raise? Ayan, I think we covered so much, but let me post one last question for the Q&A, and this goes to our role as social scientists in discussing this and actually educating the public. How best should we engage Filipinos? Because we know that budget issues are really difficult for ordinary people to actually understand. In the first place, it’s all numbers, it’s all spreadsheets. So there’s a big barrier at the outset. And if it’s not linked to political issues, otherwise it’s not really something that interests most Filipinos. So how should we engage more Filipinos? And in your experience, reaching out to people on social media, you have TikTok, YouTube, what is the most effective way of actually stimulating interest in this? And particularly for social scientists affiliated with the PSSC, how do you think social scientists should look at these issues? And how do you avoid echo chambers? Because obviously we’re all professionals, we’re all researchers, scholars, et cetera. But we need to go out of our bubble to move forward in these issues. But how should we do that? 

Dr. Magno
I think we have various levels of audiences. So for example, on the technical aspect, it’s very important to laymanize and make all our studies public because it will inform how—definitely policy formulation, evaluation projects, et cetera, et cetera. But my observation, basically, in terms of reaching out to the public is really not about all these numbers that we are discussing now. Going back to the basic of the relationship between citizens, the public, and the government because until now, we are having difficulty connecting what the role of government is, what is the responsibility of the government is to us. That’s why I go back to—these are our taxpayers’ money. Tingnan mo ‘yung basic payslip mo every 15th and 30th of the month. Tingnan mo kung magkano ‘yung dinededuct sa’yo ng gobyerno, and then the issue of the budget becomes real. Kasi pinangbili mo na sana ‘yun ng Chickenjoy sa anak mo, kaso binigay mo sa government as a form of your PhilHealth, Pag-ibig, and tax payment. And what do you get from this contribution, right? You still have huge out-of-pocket money, na kapag nagkasakit ka, mangungutang ka pa sa kapitbahay mo, at mauubos lahat ng savings mo. Is that the service that you’re expecting from your government, na dalawang oras ka gumigising, babyahe papasok sa trabaho? Is that the service that you’re expecting from the government? I think we have to reintroduce that idea, that we are actually financing and paying government to provide us these services. And even if we are accepting ayuda from the government, that’s not a gift; that’s a service that the government is providing. So we need to change the mindset that we should not be thanking government, we should be demanding services from government, we should be demanding better quality services from government, and I think that’s where accountability comes in. If we’re able to shift that thinking na hindi tayo dapat nagpapasalamat kung hindi nag dedemand ng accountability. Then, I think madali na, susunod na ‘yung pagtingin sa detalye ng budget. But as long as we’re stuck with patronage politics, na may utang na loob tayo sa mga politiko, then we’re stuck with the situation na tatanggapin na lang natin yung quality ng serbisyo na binibigay sa atin, and for me that’s very problematic. And that’s why I keep on saying this budget is the most corrupt budget. It’s not about the money, it’s not about the leakages, but what it promotes. And this budget represents the resurgence, the emergence of patronage politics. It’s the principle that it represents. It’s corrupting the Philippine society. Kasi yung mga leakages, we can plug that. We can file cases, et cetera, et cetera. But shifting that thinking that we have to go to congressmen, to senators to ask for assistance to help us pay for our hospitalization, that’s the worst that you can do to your citizen, ‘yung pagmamakaawa. Kasi yung budget na ‘to, tinatanggalan ng dignidad ‘yung mga Pilipino, and that for me is the worst kind of politics, that’s the worst kind of corruption, and that’s why this budget is the worst budget and most corrupt budget. It’s not about the money, it’s about the character, the principle that it represents. 

Dr. Punongbayan
Yeah, it’s very—yes, sige po. We can entertain one more question. 

Hemmady Mora
Good morning. A while ago, we were talking about—I’m from the Philippines Communication Society (PCS), Hemmady Mora also from PUP. You were talking about laymanizing the terms for the ordinary Filipino people. We in PCS, of course, we’re from the media, media educators. How would you assess the conduct of the Philippine media nowadays in terms of laymanizing the national budget and issues pertaining to this in order for the Filipino people to understand? And what would be your suggestions to the Philippine media to help open the eyes of the Filipino people in order to solve these political problems of being active in participating in policies? Because Filipinos, the people, ‘yung boses nila ang pinakamahalaga, right, in a democracy, and the media also plays a vital part. So ano po ang pwede nating maisuggest sa ating media? 

Dr. Magno
I think the media is doing a good job in terms of highlighting the fact that a lot of people are now talking about the budget. I think media was helpful in terms of highlighting all these issues, monitoring, doing follow-up. Ang tricky lang is the meat of the discussion on usually the budget taxation is in the business part of the newspaper, and sometimes that part is not read by everyone. So the challenge is how to translate the business part of the section to make it more layman and more easily understandable to the public. For example, issues of taxation, how do you link taxation to this budget, to the types of services that we get. We don’t usually see that as part of the usual narrative. So maybe the challenge is really, as you said, laymanizing. Minsan nga, to the extent na hindi lang laymanizing, maybe we need to go to the level of doing cartoons. You know the reality. Sorry, this is for another lecture again. The state of the health situation in the country. One-third of our population is stunted. What do we mean when people are stunted? Ibig sabihin ‘yung tangkad nila hindi naangkop sa edad nila. But it’s an indicator of a bigger problem because if people are stunted, based on academic literature, the less likely they are to complete their education. Sila yung mga hindi nakakapag-aral, hindi nakakatapos. If one third of your population is stunted, then we have a big problem. The only opportunity to address stunting is in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life. Kapag lumagpas ka na sa 3 years old, hindi mo na ma-re-reverse ‘yung negative effect ng stunting. 50% of the 20% poorest household kids are stunted. Ibig sa kalahati ng household sa 20% ng population natin na pinakamahihirap, stunted. So talk about human capital. Ito yung pinakamalaking problema ng future president kasi kung namomroblema—dapat ito na ‘yung alarm bells ng presidente ngayon. How can you attract foreign investment? How can we grow as an economy if your human capital is stunted? And if this is your citizen, imagine the level of comprehension, discourse, narrative, ‘di ba? Napakalaking challenge po ‘yan. Kaya minsan nagbibiro ako kapag may nagtotroll sa’kin, “Stunted ka ba?” Partially that’s a joke, but it’s really really a big problem, not just an economic problem, but it’s a social problem na dapat emergency na ngayon, pero hindi priority.

Dr. Punongbayan
Okay. On that note, please join me in thanking Dr. Magno for that great session and lecture. And that’s all the time we have for the Q&A; and at this point, let me give back the floor to the PSSC Executive Committee for the closing of this event. May I call on Dr. Dita, Dr. Portos, Dr. Veneracion, and Ms. Maniala to award the Certificates and Tokens of Appreciation. Thank you, Cielo.

Awarding – Dr. Portus
Thank you. Maraming salamat. Ang dami kong natutunan. My God, parang ang sarap maging estudyante mo. Anyway, we’d like to award this Certificate of Appreciation to Maria Cielo D. Magno Gatmaytan, Ph.D. for providing her incisive and thought-provoking, “Scientific Lecture: Evaluating the 2025 Philippine National Budget”, for generously sharing her research and teaching experiences related to the assessment of the national budget’s key merits and issues, for providing Filipino social scientists, through her reflections, critical, theoretical, and methodological orthodoxies, a better understanding of the Philippines’ economy as mirrored in the budget, and for her support and invaluable contribution to the achievement of the PSSC mandate, given this 15th day of February at the Philippine Social Science Center, signed Shirley Ditta, Chairperson, and Lourdes Portos, Executive Director. 

Now, we’d like to present this Certificate of Appreciation to John Carlo Punongbayan, Ph.D., for being an exemplary moderator of Dr. Cielo Magna’s “Scientific Lecture: Evaluating the 2025 Philippine National Budget”, for ensuring a lively conversation and enabling a scholarly yet grounded environment that highlights the significant role of the social sciences, in interrogating critical issues surrounding the 2025 national budget, and for extending support and invaluable contribution to PSSC’s endeavors, given this 15th day of February, Philippine Social Science Center, signed Shirley Ditta, Chairperson. 

Closing Remarks – Dr. Veneracion
Good morning. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincerest appreciation to Dr. Cielo Magno for her insightful sharing through today’s scientific lecture on the 2025 national budget. On behalf of the Philippine Social Science Council, I am deeply thankful to everyone who attended this lecture, whether in person or in online, and to the team who have played a key role in making this momentous event both possible and successful. Every year, the PSSC has consistently hosted scientific lectures, providing us with significant space for meaningful discussion and social science knowledge sharing. It is through the opportunities like this that we can reflect on key issues that underpin our society and our nation. I am certain that we have taken note and engaged with Dr. Magno’s presentation and the open forum monitored by Dr. Punongbayan. Allow me to highlight a few main points from the lecture that I think must be reiterated. In the study of politics, we were taught that the politics is the allocation of scarce resources. We have very scarce resources, and they seem to be going to people who have more. The political process also supports and institutionalizes the lack of transparency and the lack of accountability. And as Dr. Magno mentioned, the government is not following the law that they created. Is government really for the people? In the Philippines, it seems not, as the policies are shaved by decision makers and politicians’ interests. The national budget is linked to power politics, patronage, and corruptions. In this light, can we actually have checks and balances and citizens’ monitoring and audit actually work? What else can we do in order to demand what is actually due to us? Now, as we move forward, let us take stock of today’s lessons and continue to apply them in our respective disciplines to foster social science knowledge sharing, ensure disciplinal advancement, and link PSSC’s crucial work to public policy. We hope to see you in the future PSSC events and continue to your support and engagement in our endeavors. Once again, I’d like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to our lecturer, Dr. Magno, and congratulations to PSSC for a successful event. Mabuhay tayong lahat. Thank you.