Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Rolando U. Toledo is pushing to slash the strongly opposed unprogrammed budgetary funds to as low as three percent of the record ₱6.793-trillion 2026 national budget.

Toledo told reporters during a business-government forum on Tuesday, Feb. 24, that the government could “as much as possible” trim unprogrammed appropriations (UAs), adding that their level was among the concerns raised during budget preparation.

“For myself, I can go lower at three percent probably, not just five percent, just to minimize the program appropriations level,” Toledo said. He, however, stressed that such a move still requires thorough deliberations in Congress.

DBM Assistant Secretary Romeo Matthew T. Balanquit earlier said imposing a cap on UAs would set a boundary for Congress to refrain from inflating allocations for national projects.

UAs dropped by nearly three-fifths to ₱218.2 billion in 2025 from ₱531.4 billion in 2024, the latest preliminary data from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) showed. This is equivalent to 3.5 percent of last year’s ₱6.326-trillion budget.

It bears noting that assistance to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), which received the lion’s share in 2024 at ₱155.9 billion, dropped to only ₱20.5 billion.

Support for foreign-assisted projects (FAPs) stayed largely steady, dipping slightly from ₱127.1 billion in 2024 to ₱110.4 billion in 2025, with the DPWH seeing a rise in its share from ₱45.9 billion to ₱58.9 billion.

Meanwhile, the government’s counterpart funding for FAPs fell sharply, dropping from ₱40.9 billion last year to ₱10.5 billion in 2025.

The government tightened fiscal discipline by slashing UAs for fiscal year (FY) 2026 to ₱150.9 billion, the lowest level for standby funds since 2019 and even below pre-pandemic figures.

According to the DBM, the massive reduction is part of a deliberate strategy to prevent abuse and ensure transparency. UAs are standby spending authorities that can only be used if specific conditions are met, such as revenue collections exceeding targets or the securing of new loans.

Allocations for 2026 UAs were slashed from a peak of ₱807.2 billion in 2023, marking a massive decline compared with previous years. Over the past seven years, UA allocations have fluctuated, ranging from ₱176.3 billion in 2021 to ₱731.4 billion in 2024 before falling to the current level.

Meanwhile, Toledo said the modest year-on-year drop in budget releases in January was understandable, as the DBM “only released the comprehensive operational requirements of the agency.”

The latest data showed the DBM released ₱4.25 trillion as of the end of January, or 62.6 percent of the total ₱6.793-trillion obligation program for 2026. This comes as the government accelerates spending to bankroll infrastructure and social priority projects.

“We’re still receiving requests for additional funding for [agencies’] payables from prior years and, at the same time, their additional requirements for the quarter,” the Budget chief said, noting that the DBM only monitors quarterly.

“We’re still in the middle of the quarter,” he asserted, but added that the DBM is expecting additional funding requests.

“Low disbursement affected our growth, so we’re looking to increase disbursements as far as the agency is concerned. We’re just awaiting the submission of their requests. We’re already receiving some, but they are still being processed.”

According to Toledo, the DBM is targeting around ₱1.4 trillion in spending for the first quarter alone to help prop up the economy and recover from the fourth-quarter spending contraction that dragged on growth.

Data showed the target spending for the quarter is comparable to the ₱1.44 trillion spent in the same period in 2025.