Proposed 2027 budget

The real score

Written out in full, the 2027 proposal is P7,200,186,000,000.

That is 7,200,186 million pesos. Or 7,200 billion. Or 7.2 trillion, which is the number everyone quotes because the others are unreadable.

The grid draws each of those billions as one square. A million pesos would be a thousandth of one square, too small to print on any page.

Another way in. A million seconds is 11.6 days. A billion seconds is 31.7 years. Spend a peso every second and P7.2 trillion lasts about 228,000 years.

But scale cuts both ways. Split across the population, the whole national budget is roughly P63,000 per Filipino for the year, which is a little over P170 a day to cover schools, roads, hospitals, soldiers, and debt.

P63,235

The budget per Filipino for the year, against a 2025 population of 113.9 million

228,165

Years it would take to count it out at one peso a second

The budget may seem as large as ever, and it is. But in fact, about two-fifths of the proposal for 2027 can't be touched. Local governments' share of national taxes and interest on the national debt come to P2,434 billion between them.

That is already 33.8% of the entire proposal.

Nobody sits down each year and decides those two amounts. One is a share of taxes collected three years earlier, fixed by law. The other is whatever we owe our lenders.

Add the BARMM block grant (the yearly transfer to the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao), pensions, and the retirement premiums of government workers. About 40% of the budget is spoken for before anyone chooses anything.

But the fight is over what remains. Education and public works alone take 22.5% of the total.

18.3%

Local governments' share of national taxes, the single largest item

15.5%

Interest on the debt, up 17.3% from the 2026 budget that was signed

85.2%

Share of the whole budget held by the 13 items shown

A budget of P7.2 trillion sounds enormous. But set against the size of the economy, it is almost exactly what it was four years ago.

The budget-GDP ratio has sat between 21.7% and 22.6% of gross domestic product (GDP) in every year since 2023.

The peak is 2025, at 22.6%. That was not a spending surge. The budget grew 9.7% that year while the economy grew 5.9% in peso terms, so the same money became a larger slice of a smaller economy than anyone had planned for.

Te last two bars rest on a forecast of GDP growth. The problem is that we already missed growth targets in the past. 

For 2025 the government projected nominal GDP of P28,356 billion at the low end of its range. The outturn was P28,014 billion, short by P342 billion.

The advertised 21.7% for 2027 assumes the economy grows 8.8% in peso terms. Miss by as much as 2025 missed, and the ratio is 22.0% instead.

21.7%

The 2027 proposal as a share of projected GDP, the same share as 2023

P342B

How far the 2025 economy fell short of the government's own low projection

Look only at department totals and Congress seems to move about 6% of the budget. Look at individual programs, however, and it moves 16–23%.

Put another way, roughly three quarters of the money Congress moves stays inside the same department, taken from one of its programs and given to another.

Judge the budget by department totals and all of that is invisible.

Going finer still, down to individual funds and expense types, barely changes the answer.

Implication: The real bargaining happens at the level of programs.

Congress passes the budget. The President then writes next year's proposal. But how much of what Congress changed does he keep?

The answer, every year, is between 30% and 50%. Raise a program by P10 billion and the next proposal typically keeps only P3 to P5 billion of that increase. The rest is quietly pulled back toward what the President asked for in the first place.

That "survival rate" is measured by lambda in the graph. It is a share, not a peso amount, which is why it can be compared across four very different years.

But the mirror image matters just as much. The President's own previous request carries roughly twice the weight of the law that was actually signed.

Confidential funds at the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) show it plainly. They were proposed at exactly P0.907 billion 4 years running, raised by Congress three times out of four, and proposed again unchanged each time.

For example, DOH medical assistance goes P24.24 billion, then P51.65 billion, then P24.24 billion.

The same pattern repeats across the assistance programs. Of the P500 billion Congress added across government, P283 billion is taken out again in the next proposal. Of what it cut, P306 billion is put back.

But the Local Government Support Fund (LGSF) is the exception. Congress raised it by P41.8 billion and the President kept the higher figure. It is the only large fund on this list where what Congress enacted became the new starting point.

Note that a year earlier the same fund was raised and then pulled back down.

So this is a change of behavior, not a rule.

+P10.0B

Presidential Assistance to Farmers and Fisherfolk. It appears in the 2026 law and in no other document, before or after

P0

Tulong Dunong student grants in all three proposals, but funded in both budgets that were signed

In every year we can compare, Congress enacted more ayuda than the President proposed. There is no exception.

The gap is by no means small. The enacted figure runs between 1.5 and 2.6 times the proposal.

Congress added P31.8 billion in 2023, P92.6 billion in 2024, P53.5 billion in 2025, and P75.0 billion in 2026.

But 4Ps moves the other way. The Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) is our largest cash transfer and the one with the tightest rules on who qualifies. In the 2025 law, Congress cut it from P114.2 billion to P64.2 billion.

Note where the missing P50 billion went. It reappears in the 2025 standby list (aka "unprogrammed funds"), at exactly P50 billion. That money is released only if extra revenue turns up.

So in one budget, Congress raised the assistance that officials hand out case by case, and made the rules-based transfer conditional on money that may never arrive.

2.6x

How much larger the enacted 2024 ayuda budget was than the proposal, the widest gap in the window

P0

What Tulong Dunong student grants were proposed at in all five proposals. Congress funded them in all four enacted budgets

Four big streams carry national money to local governments. Three of them are set by formula, and Congress has never changed any of the three by a single peso.

The National Tax Allotment, the special shares of local governments in national taxes, and the BARMM block grant are identical in the proposal and in the law, in all four years.

The fourth stream has no formula. The Local Government Support Fund (LGSF) is a lump sum, and it is the one that moves.

In the 2026 budget it went from P16.1 billion proposed to P57.9 billion enacted. That is a rise of 260% in one passage through Congress.

But almost all of the increase sits in a single line inside it. Financial Assistance to Local Government Units (FALGU), which carries no allocation rule at all, went from P5.0 billion to P37.5 billion. The Growth Equity Fund (GEF) added another P10.3 billion.

Note that the President kept the higher figure. The LGSF is proposed at P58.5 billion for 2027, with Financial Assistance to LGUs held at exactly P37.5 billion.

P0

Change Congress made to the three formula-based transfers, in any of the four years

100%

Share of the 2026 change in these four streams that came from the one fund with no formula

In 2026, there was a sharp drop in flood control after intense public scrutiny. The 2025 proposal was P254.3 billion, then Congress approved P249.8 billion, then in 2026 the proposal was P250.8 billion. But Congress only approved P4.8 billion.

Three budgets in a row within P4.5 billion of each other, then a cut of 98%, then a partial return to P103.5 billion in the 2027 proposal.

Whatever happened in the 2026 budget, it was not a gradual change of priorities.

But the money did not stay in the department. The DPWH fell from P881.3 billion to P530.9 billion, while its local roads, bridges, and multipurpose halls rose by only P73 billion.

Most of the missing P246 billion left the department altogether, for health, social welfare, and the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth).

The North–South Commuter Railway and the Metro Manila Subway take P191.3 billion. That is 97% of all rail money and 64% of the entire Department of Transportation (DOTr).

Everything else on rails, meaning the whole Light Rail Transit (LRT) and Metro Rail Transit (MRT) network plus the Philippine National Railways (PNR), comes to P6.3 billion between them.

Two-thirds of the two mega-projects is borrowed money: P56.7 billion from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and P67.7 billion from Japan.

But seventeen rail projects sit at zero, among them the Mindanao Railway, PNR South Long Haul, MRT-4, and the LRT-2 extensions.

Zero here means zero in the regular budget. Projects like these usually sit on the standby list instead, which is the next section.

−81% / −55%

How much Congress cut proposed rail spending in 2025 and 2026. The P197 billion is a request, not a settled figure

Congress added P219 billion, then P450 billion, then P373 billion to the standby list in three straight years. Then, in 2026, nothing.

This is where Congress has a free hand. The regular budget has a ceiling it cannot raise. The standby list does not.

In fact, the P450 billion added in 2024 is nearly as large as everything Congress shifted around inside the regular budget that whole year.

But 2026 breaks the pattern.

For the first time, the signed figure came in P6.6 billion below what the President proposed. That is the same year Congress moved P500 billion around inside the regular budget instead.

In no year between 2023 and 2027 did Congress cut these funds. Not once.

2024 is where the pattern shifts. It is the only budget where confidential funds end up below the proposal, from P4.86 billion down to P4.11 billion, as the Office of the Vice President, the Department of Education (DepEd), and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) are all zeroed out.

But in the same document, intelligence funds rise from P5.28 billion to P8.27 billion, almost all of it in the security agencies. The money moved from civilian offices to security ones, and the total still went up.

Note that the Office of the President has sat at P4.560 billion in eight documents in a row, untouched by either branch.

That is 42% of everything proposed for 2027.