Budget evolution and absorptive capacity, FY 2018-2026
These reviews go beyond the headline figures. For each department we compile the proposed (NEP) and enacted (GAA) budgets down to the level of individual Programs, Activities, and Projects (P/A/Ps), then match them against the agency Financial Accountability Reports (the SAAODB) that record how each peso was actually released, obligated, and disbursed. Assembling these sources at the P/A/P level is painstaking, but it is what makes a sharper reading possible — not just how much a department received, but where Congress redirected it, which programs could absorb their funding, and where promised spending never materialized. Every report pairs the analysis with sortable, exportable reference tables so you can trace the figures yourself; coverage and scope vary by agency, as each report’s data note explains.
Interactive dashboards
Agency Budget & Utilization Dashboard
National agency level · NEP, GAA & utilization · FY 2016–2027
P/A/P Browser Dashboard
Program, Activity & Project level · NEP & GAA · FY 2020–2027
What the House did to the President’s proposal: where it added and cut, what’s inside the bill, the red flags to watch, and what advocates can push to amend in plenary and the Senate.
Read the analysis →What the FY 2027 budget proposes: the biggest increases and cuts against 2026, how well it answers the year’s crises, the red flags to watch, and what advocates can push to amend in Congress.
Read the analysis →How fast the economy is growing, what prices are doing, and how much room the fiscal position leaves the budget. The setting every department and sector report reads against.
Read the analysis →A small department, and one Congress tends to trim rather than augment. The FY 2027 NEP proposes to shrink DAR-OSEC 13% (to ₱14.7B) — winding down the SPLIT land-titling project and pivoting the money into livelihood lines the agency absorbs worst. Includes a full, sortable per-P/A/P table with 2025–2027 amounts and the latest utilization data.
The FY 2027 NEP proposes to cut DA to ₱171B (₱152B for the OSEC), −8% from the 2026 enacted level — nearly halving Farm-to-Market Roads while growing the foreign-assisted project portfolio to over half the OSEC, even though it disburses only 33–53%. Includes full sortable per-P/A/P tables (2025–2027 amounts, plus OSEC utilization) and deep-dives by service type and commodity.
The FY 2027 proposal is ₱914B — up ₱41B (+5%) and the largest yet, though still below the Congress-augmented 2026 enacted level (₱959B). A payroll-dominated budget whose strong headline absorption masks chronic under-spending in the non-salary tail — textbooks, facilities, and the collapsing GASTPE subsidies. The proposal grows school operations but trims computerization, new teacher positions, and textbooks.
Report in preparation.
The FY 2027 proposal is ₱20.6B — essentially flat, and unusually a ceiling rather than a floor: Congress trims DENR instead of augmenting it (it cut the 2026 proposal by ₱1.25B). A frozen budget held at ₱16–20B for a decade — a ~30% real-terms cut — while the reforestation line is gutted and the department shifts from capital works toward payroll.
The FY 2027 proposal is ₱264B — up 4% and the largest yet, but again far below what Congress enacts (the 2026 GAA reached ₱298B). An aggressively Congress-augmented budget whose binding constraint is a capital-outlay bottleneck: the infrastructure pipeline (HFEP) cannot disburse what it is given. MAIFIP and HFEP are proposed flat, so their real budgets are settled at enactment.
A large labor department that is, to a first approximation, one program: TUPAD emergency employment is about 70% of it. The budget surged during COVID and stayed high, and Congress adds heavily every year — almost all to TUPAD. The FY 2027 proposal is ~₱26B (TUPAD ₱16.7B, about 64%), a floor Congress has topped up every year; in 2023 three agencies left for the new Department of Migrant Workers. Execution is read at the agency level only.
The FY 2027 proposal is ₱236B (+6%), but the flagship 4Ps is proposed down ₱14B to ₱99B — the first time the Executive itself cuts it — while a new ₱17.7B Panahon ng Pagkilos program appears and discretionary Protective Services grows. An almost pure cash-transfer budget where Congress reshapes the portfolio from within: trimming 4Ps, scaling up Protective Services, and inventing AKAP by appropriation alone.
A different angle: with no P/A/P-level execution data, this review traces DPWH’s budget back to 1988 and maps how Congress redirects money — every year — from the Central Office toward named district engineering offices. A granular section then opens up the programs line by line: what Asset Preservation, Network Development, and the fast-growing Convergence & Special Support basket actually contain; the FY2022 pivot from the Local Program to Convergence; the items Congress builds up (SIPAG/BIP access roads and multi-purpose buildings) versus those it cuts (national by-pass roads, major-river flood control, new bridges); and the flood-control-scandal FY2026 revision that gutted flood control between the original and revised NEP. Includes the FY 2027 proposal and both the 2019 and 2025 line-item vetoes.
The government’s technical-vocational training authority — a fast-growing, ₱26B agency that is, in budget terms, a scholarships-and-training operation (two lines are ~92% of it). Congress drives much of the growth (+₱17B), but disbursement is falling behind: cash utilization slid to 48% in 2025. Three mother agencies in nine years.
A large but stagnant ₱47B budget that is, in effect, a free-tuition fund: student subsidies are ~96% of it, and one line (free higher education) is ~79% on its own. The regulatory core is ~2%. Congress swings it violently (+₱37B in 2018, −₱20B in 2022), and execution is chronically weak — often only 40–60% disbursed.
A very small agency carrying an outsized IPRA mandate. With no FAR No. 1, execution is read only at the agency level — but the budget story is clear: a near-doubling since 2018, a sharp 2025 cut, and an administration-heavy mix, across two reorganizations.
A small commission with no FAR No. 1, so execution is read only at the agency level. A fast grower (+145% since 2018) that spends what it receives — but set against the community it serves, the 2026 budget is about ₱188 per Muslim Filipino a year, so the open questions are about adequacy and reach.
The lead agency on gender mainstreaming, at the million-peso scale — small enough to read line by line. The budget nearly doubled, Congress tops it up every year (and funds a recurring stream of one-off “Tier 2” lines), but absorption is softening as MOOE outpaces what the agency can spend.
A very small agency — the government’s sole policy body for Filipino youth — at about ₱10 per young Filipino a year. Congress only ever adds to it, and in FY 2025 (an election year) nearly tripled it to ₱632M — but the agency disbursed only 58%, showing the limits of a sudden windfall. Execution is read at the agency level only.
Cross-cutting funds and special-purpose appropriations that sit outside any single department, reviewed in the same long-form format as the department reports.
The discretionary lump sums in the budget — pensions, salary adjustments, the calamity and contingent funds — once the LGU and GOCC transfers are set aside. Congress cuts them in the GAA year after year, deepest (₱237B in 2024) in the same years it inflated the standby Unprogrammed Appropriations. Releases run ₱3.1T since 2011, mostly uniformed-personnel pensions flowing to defence and interior. Includes fund-level trajectories, the cases where releases beat the ceiling, and sortable fund and department tables.
The standby fund that releases only if revenue overshoots the program or new loans come in. It ballooned under Marcos, reaching a ₱807B enacted fund in 2023, with Congress adding as much as ₱449B over the President’s proposal before reversing course in 2026. Includes the year-by-year trajectory, the NEP-versus-GAA gap, utilisation rates, and sortable line-item and department breakdowns.
Cross-cutting briefing decks that follow a theme or sector across several departments, rather than analysing a single agency. These are slide decks; more will be added over time.
AREAccountability, Rights, and Environment
Farmers, marginalized sectors, commuters and housing, justice, and the environment · FY 2020–2027
EHEducation and Health
The trifocal education system, the state universities and colleges, and the health system · FY 2020–2027
LSPLabor and Social Protection
Ayuda, wages, welfare, farms, housing, and the workers who leave · FY 2020–2027