The People’s Budget Coalition (PBC) and Right to Know, Now! Groups have noted that the panel tasked to reconcile the differences between the Senate and House versions of the 2026 general appropriations bill have instead asked for higher allocations for several ‘ayuda’ and unappropriated allocations (UA), which could fund billions of pesos in politically-sensitive spending yet again.
Meanwhile, the budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways was basically left hanging while the technical staff of the bicameral conference committee still had to complete its final computations.
PBC co-convenor AJ Montesa said that among the most contentious items were the sharp increases to what it called ‘soft pork’ programs which are implemented at the discretion of lawmakers or elected officials – particularly the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situations (AICS), the Department of Labor and Employment’s Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/Displaced Workers (TUPAD), and the Department of Health’s Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients (MAIFIP) programs.
All three programs, which critics have called a ‘soft’ version of pork barrels, saw their budgets more than double from the original proposal under the National Expenditure Program (NEP). MAIFIP went from P24 billion to P51 billion, AICS from P27 billion to 63 billion, and TUPAD from P12 billion to P25 billion.
Other kinds of ‘soft pork,’ like the Commission on Higher Education’s Tulong Dunong scholarship program and the Department of Agriculture’s Presidential Assistance to Farmers and Fisherfolk, did not have an allocation in the NEP but were given P2 billion and P10 billion, respectively, by the bicam.
The programs are considered ‘soft pork’ because lawmakers “exercised [a] large degree of influence in the distribution of these programs. They are likely to choose to give them to political allies,” Montesa said.
Hard or soft, pork is still pork and any increase that is discovered should be considered a red flag, especially if those additional billions are essentially placed under the control of politicians in this country, who still have a long way to go in convincing Filipinos that they can be trusted to use such funds properly.
As long as our politicians have failed to earn our trust, the national budget should shun all types of pork.*
