President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Wednesday, October 15, announced that the bicameral conference committee for the 2026 national budget deliberation will be livestreamed to promote transparency in the budget process.
The move comes amid longstanding suspicions that the closed-door bicameral meetings have been a source of corruption, with lawmakers accused of inserting or inflating budget allocations for kickbacks.
In an interview with reporters at Malacañang Palace, Marcos said he had reached an agreement with congressional leaders to open the process to the public.
“I have an agreement with the Senate President and Speaker na ganun ang gagawin natin. We will livestream the entire process so that if there are questionable, shall we say insertions or additions or all that, it will also be clear who made those changes or who proposed those changes,” Marcos said.
He also noted that the long-criticized “small committee” responsible for making large budget changes has been abolished.
Marcos had earlier warned Congress against making unauthorized alterations to the National Expenditure Program, threatening to veto the 2026 budget if such practices continued.
However, the President said that after reviewing the recently passed House version of the budget, he found no major deviations from the administration’s original plan.
“I do not think, from the last time that I saw the last version of the budget, I did not see anything that broke away from the plans of the national government,” Marcos said in a mix of English and Filipino.
He added, however, that he is not ruling out the possibility of a veto, as the bicameral process has yet to conclude.
The administration’s decision to livestream the proceedings comes amid a high-profile corruption scandal involving alleged budget insertions in flood control projects, with billions of pesos believed to have been diverted through kickback schemes.
The controversy has already led to the replacement of both the House Speaker and the Senate President, though no formal charges have yet been filed against any government officials.
Marcos said the livestreaming measure aims to ensure accountability and rebuild public trust in the budget process.
