Philippine Supreme Court bars Congress budget increases

A Philippine Supreme Court ruling barred Congress from raising budgets through unprogrammed funds, including a ₱449.5 billion 2024 increase, Rappler reported in an Oct. 22 news article.

The decision matters because Congress raised 2024 unprogrammed appropriations from a ₱281.9 billion request to ₱731.45 billion approved, while programmed funds matched the president’s ₱4.019 trillion proposal, Rappler said.

Unprogrammed appropriations are budget items meant to give the president flexibility for unforeseen needs, including foreign-assisted programs not yet approved when the spending plan is prepared. The Supreme Court, according to Rappler, upheld the mechanism in general but required clearer safeguards and transparency.

The court said Congress may not use unprogrammed appropriations to get around the 1987 Constitution’s rule that lawmakers cannot raise the president’s proposed appropriations for government operations. The ruling said the ceiling covers total appropriations, including both programmed and unprogrammed spending.

A central issue was Strengthening Assistance for Government Infrastructure and Social Programs, or SAGIP, a line item placed under unprogrammed appropriations without a breakdown in the signed General Appropriations Act. Rappler said the court called it a “covert repository of lump sum allocations for DPWH [Department of Public Works and Highways] infrastructure.”

The ruling also affects the 2026 General Appropriations Act, the budget now in force. The court struck down two conditions Congress had set for activating unprogrammed funds, according to the article.

For 2026, Rappler said excess collections from a single non-tax revenue source at the Bureau of the Treasury will not automatically permit releases. The government’s total revenue collections must exceed the overall budget target, and the article said it was unclear whether that threshold had been met.

Unprogrammed funds in the 2026 budget may also be used only when loans for foreign-assisted projects are approved, Rappler said. Senate President Pro Tempore Tito Sotto promised livestreamed bicameral conference deliberations for the proposed 2027 budget after the ruling’s release, according to the article.

The court did not automatically unwind completed spending under the 2024 and 2025 budgets. Rappler quoted the ruling as saying Filipinos had already benefited from programs funded by the laws and that public disruption would outweigh “a rigid insistence on their legal nullity.”

The doctrine of operative fact, which preserves effects of acts later found invalid when people relied on them in good faith, does not protect budget authors, proponents or implementers from criminal, civil or administrative liability, Rappler said.

The Supreme Court partially or fully ruled in favor of four groups of petitioners, according to the article. They included petitions linked to the late congressman Edcel Lagman, former senator Koko Pimentel and former congressman Pantaleon Alvarez, Filipinos for Peace, Justice, and Progress Movement Inc., and House lawmakers Edgar Erice and Leila de Lima.

2027 budget checks

The next check is whether Congress livestreams bicameral conference deliberations for the proposed 2027 budget, as Sotto promised, according to Rappler. Those talks are where House and Senate negotiators reconcile separate versions of the spending bill.

Another test is whether future budget documents specify the order of priority when unprogrammed appropriations are assigned to more than one purpose. Rappler said the Supreme Court required clearer prioritization as part of safeguards on executive spending.

The 2026 budget also gives an immediate compliance test: whether unprogrammed releases are tied to total revenue collections exceeding the overall target or to approved loans for foreign-assisted projects, the conditions Rappler said survived the ruling.

Source: news article, Rappler, Oct. 22, 2026