CIVIC OVERSIGHT: Groups urge participatory budgeting in PHL budget cycle

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

Civil society groups are calling on the Philippine government to widen participatory budgeting and tighten public scrutiny of spending decisions, arguing that stronger citizen engagement would improve public investment outcomes and reduce opportunities for last-minute “insertions” that the public struggles to track.

The appeal was delivered by Kenneth Isaiah Ibasco Abante, president of WeSolve Foundation and a member of the People’s Budget Coalition, during the 11th Socioeconomic Research Portal for the Philippines (SERP-P) Knowledge-Sharing Forum hosted by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS).

“We see how important the participation of ordinary citizens is in the government’s budgeting process. People matter because we are the ones who experience the effects of every budget,” Abante said in the release.

Organizers tied the push to a practical tool: “Budget Natin: A Guidebook for Engaging the Philippine Budget Cycle,” published in May 2023 and funded by the National Democratic Institute, with contributions from WeSolve Foundation, the Institute for Leadership, Empowerment and Democracy (iLEAD) and contributing authors including Abante and Zy-za Nadine Suzara.

The guidebook frames participation as a way to connect “problem owners” — people directly affected by policies and programs — to the decisions that determine whether services and infrastructure actually reach communities.

Flood control spending was cited as a central example of why earlier, broader participation matters for public investment quality.

“Over the past 10 years, the government has allocated PHP 1.7 trillion for flood control projects,” Abante said, arguing that allocations can grow even when communities remain vulnerable to floods and when technical plans are not consistently followed.

A synthesis document linked to the materials said expert master plans for 18 major river basins would have cost only PHP 800–900 billion, describing the gap between funded projects and technical planning as a costly mismatch that participatory budgeting could help close.

In the forum discussion, Abante said public works budgets show a pattern of “backdoor insertions,” pointing to approximately PHP 828 billion in Department of Public Works and Highways insertions from 2018 through 2025 and describing how these changes are hard for citizens to follow.

He also described how his group’s flood-control monitoring work was organized, citing Bisto Proyecto and the website Bisto.ph, and saying the team mobilized people in five provinces and five dioceses to help validate project conditions on the ground.

Transparency and participation in the budget process

Civil society advocates also renewed criticism of closed-door steps in the national budget process, particularly bicameral conference committee deliberations that reconcile House and Senate versions of the budget.

“There should be documented minutes, and amendments should only be made in open plenary sessions, so the public can clearly see who proposed changes and why,” Abante said, while stressing that livestreams alone do not create a complete public record.

Abante also pointed to procurement transparency as part of budget accountability, referencing the Pharmally scandal and saying more accessible public information could help detect weak contractors before they secure massive contracts.

“Greater transparency—such as an easily searchable database of contractors, beneficial owners, and financial records—could have prevented firms with limited capacity from securing multibillion-peso government contracts,” he said.

In the transcript, Abante described the Pharmally issue as involving a PHP 10 billion government deal and used it to argue that reforms should include traceable records of who benefits from contracts and how changes are made.

The emphasis on traceability extends to smaller line items, where Abante said patterns such as “farm to market roads” can be audited by reading the fine print, citing an annex that listed PHP 16 billion and more than 700 projects, with more than 500 projects listed at exactly PHP 15 million.

From evidence to budget shifts

Advocates argued that citizen participation is not only about consultation, but also about measurable outcomes in budget negotiations when groups combine research, coalition-building and sustained engagement.

The “Budget Natin” guidebook cites PHP 69 billion advocated by the People’s Budget Coalition in the 2022 budget for COVID-19 response and recovery, and PHP 33 billion advocated by the Move As One Coalition for protected bicycle lanes, service contracts and social support for transport workers.

In a training scenario inside the same guidebook, Move As One is described as a broad coalition of 142 organizations and 77,000 individuals that advocated for protected bike lanes and service contracting during the pandemic.

A separate section describing the coalition’s budget work refers to 140 organizations and 70,000 petition signatories, underscoring how the coalition’s footprint is communicated through different counts across materials.

The guidebook also includes a technical example of how advocates dissect allocations, comparing the 2021 General Appropriations Act’s capital outlay figures for railways and roads to illustrate what organizers called a long-running tilt toward road infrastructure.

For 2021, it cites a rail capital outlay of PHP 72.9 billion and a road capital outlay of PHP 6.7 billion, while noting that roads still accounted for 9% of total spending but public transport was less than 1% — and that road capital outlay was PHP 49.3 billion, or 7.36 times larger than rail, a difference described as 636%.

It also highlights a “special provision 9” described as enabling service contracting, noting it was “not in the NEP but was included in the GAA” and tying the provision to pandemic-era discussions about “saving public transport.”

The same section cites operational constraints, including Department of Transportation staffing of 5,120, described as smaller than universities such as De La Salle University (15,000) and Ateneo de Manila University (6,000), while also stating that the department received only 3.54% of the 2023 budget.

It also reports that only 1.4% of public utility vehicles were modernized at the time of writing, compared with a 22% target in 2023 and a 50% target in 2024, as an example of how budget lines, timelines and performance targets can be evaluated together.

Local reforms in Naga City

Abante and other advocates pointed to Naga City as an example of participatory budgeting that goes beyond “token” consultations and into budget execution.

Naga passed a People’s Budget Ordinance in 2017, and in 2023 the city used multi-sector workshops — involving more than 10 sectors — to generate proposals that were later integrated into budget planning, according to the release.

The release said citizen-led proposals accounted for PHP 45 million of the city’s PHP 55 million annual investment program, and it cited initiatives including car-free streets and a reworked deliberation process that grouped city agencies into clusters rather than requiring separate hearings for dozens of offices.

“It showed us that it’s possible,” Abante said, referring to the Naga approach and the idea that budget decisions can be made more legible to the public when institutions set rules that favor openness.

In the transcript, Abante said Naga shifted from deliberations involving “55 offices” to “8 clusters,” arguing that procedural changes can make it easier for citizens to track where money is going and to understand why proposals are accepted or rejected.

The guidebook extends the Naga story through a pandemic-era case study, describing Tarabangan Kontra COVID-19 Naga as a nonpartisan group that built a people’s agenda for COVID-19 response and recovery through community listening.

It lists Tarabangan’s representatives as including rural health officers, doctors, field nurses, data scientists, business groups, restaurants, lawyers, religious groups, mothers, cultural and environment groups and civil society leaders, and says the group conducted three community listening exercises before gaining a seat on the city’s health emergency task force.

Working with the local government, the case study says Tarabangan helped manage three COVID-19 surges — alpha/beta in June 2021, Delta in October 2021 and Omicron in January 2022 — mobilized more than 326 volunteers and expanded testing to 1,571 people from July 2 to 31, 2021 through home-based antigen testing organized with the Office of the Vice President.

The same section reports that Tarabangan helped lower a seven-day positivity rate from 30% to 8%, inspected 272 establishments for public health compliance, and vaccinated over 1,728 people through off-site vaccinations.

Budget constraints and ‘where the fight moves’

The participatory budgeting push is unfolding as policymakers and researchers debate how much room the government has to fund new priorities, given mandatory spending and debt-service costs.

In the forum, a discussion of 2026 assumptions cites a proposed budget of PHP 6.542 trillion, projected revenue of PHP 4.54 trillion, and a deficit of PHP 1.21 trillion, alongside macro assumptions that include a foreign exchange rate of PHP 56–58 to USD 1.00 and inflation of 2%–4%.

The same segment cites “mandatory expenditures” of PHP 4.10 trillion, described as 62.7% of the proposed budget, and debt servicing of PHP 613.6 billion, described as 9.4% of the budget, as constraints that can crowd out discretionary spending.

Speakers also discussed earmarked revenues and underspending as structural issues, citing idle earmarked funds reaching PHP 813 billion by 2024, while also saying earmarked fund collections grew at 18.3% annually from PHP 6.4 billion in 1986 to PHP 200.9 billion in 2024.

The forum cited an overall utilization rate of 24.3% for earmarked funds from 2014 to 2024, dropping to 13.6% when excluding National Tax Allotment, as evidence that collection does not automatically translate into services delivered.

Abante said citizen groups need to “follow the money” because “the government spends trillions of pesos every year,” and he described the annual budget as “PHP 6.7 trillion” in his remarks.

Youth fellows and ‘proof of concept’

The “Budget Natin” guidebook highlights the Young Budget Leaders Program as a pipeline for training citizen advocates to interpret line items, build proposals and engage institutions through research and coalition work.

It describes the program as a six-month, part-time, paid fellowship, and says the first batch proposed a combined “PHP 6.8 billion” in budget proposals across local, regional and national levels.

Riz Supreme Balgos Comia is described as proposing a PHP 10.5 million budget for waste workers in Pinamalayan, Oriental Mindoro, and as having served as the youth representative and co-chair of the Pinamalayan Municipal Peace and Order Council from 2018 to 2022.

Dave Sy is described as proposing PHP 4.2 million to support gender-inclusive programs and policies for the LGBTQIA+ community in Oas, Albay, and as having worked with the Legal Network for Truthful Elections and election monitoring efforts.

Reycel Hyacenth Nacario Bendaña is described as proposing PHP 1.9 million for a feeding program for students in Nagcarlan, Laguna, and as having worked on policy and leadership topics with organizations including Teach for the Philippines and the National Youth Commission.

Angela Dio Bonuel and Leonardo M. Galvez are described as proposing PHP 40 billion to fund the Department of Labor and Employment’s Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/Displaced Workers program in Barangay Pinyahan, Quezon City.

Josiah David Quising is described as proposing PHP 99.5 million to establish an Automated Document and Workflow Management System, and as having worked on procurement and public policy topics as a lawyer and organizer.

Husna Redza Ebrahim is described as proposing a PHP 6.7 billion regional budget to support “Tabang Bakwit,” a program for internally displaced persons in Marawi, including a description of her work on peacebuilding and education.

Regine Verdeprado-Mangga is described as proposing PHP 12 million to support a “Recovery and Reintegration Program for Trafficked Persons in Western Visayas,” and the guidebook includes a quote warning that “Current funding for long-term recovery services is only ~P15.58 billion, and there is no set budget for this in the General Appropriations Act.”

The guidebook also profiles Denver Balbuena, describing him as an entrepreneur and community builder who has represented various sectors in Italy, Thailand, Malaysia and Azerbaijan, as an example of the program’s mix of organizers and policy learners.

Abante closed his remarks by framing participatory budgeting as a long game of institution-building rather than a single policy win.

“Poverty, corruption are all wicked problems, but with empowered communities, we can make things happen,” he said.