Cholesterol-free budget

Congressional leaders withdrew their threat to return the National Expenditure Program, the basis for the budget bill for 2026, to the DBM.

- BOO CHANCO

They explained their earlier plan to return the NEP because they do not want to be blamed for the errors they found in it. DBM has promised to fix the errors.

Apparently, the technocrat DBM Secretary isn't as good as some economists think. Imagine submitting a national budget to Congress with allocations for infrastructure projects that had already been completed!

Congressmen claim there are double entries. There are missing entries. There are double appropriations. There are oversized lump sums. Stung by the strong negative reactions to congressional insertions for pork projects, the congressmen are saying it is important to clean up the NEP because BBM vowed to veto a budget bill that isn't in line with it.

A paper prepared by the Foundation for Economic Freedom analyzing flood control projects also came to the same conclusion about the problematic NEP submitted by DBM to Congress. There are mistakes and pork is alive in the DBM submission.

For starters, the Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department (CPBRD) puts the 2026 flood control program at P250.83 billion. Compared to last year's NEP 2025 (at P254.3 billion), the proposed NEP is nearly the same.

On the other hand, the FEF paper, prepared by Engr. Rene Santiago, points out that the 2026 proposal for flood control appears to be almost half (49 percent reduction) of the P496 billion contained in GAA 2025. The difference between the NEP 2025 and GAA 2025 values is the scale of insertions at P242 billion.

Santiago complains that the NEP 2026 presentation is a fog of numbers—whether by design or neglect, its opacity borders on distraction.