Senate Finance Committee chief Senator Joseph Victor “JV” Ejercito on Thursday, August 13, vowed that he would not allow the “leadership fund” in the proposed 2027 national budget under his watch.

Ejercito, who recently assumed leadership of the finance panel, said this in an interview at the Senate on Thursday, August 13.

“As far as we are concerned there would be no leadership fund. I will continue with that because Senate President Win (Sherwin Gatchalian) was the finance chairman that time and he said he did not such a fund,” Ejercito said.

“So it will not happen again. Nothing like that will happen,” he said.

Earlier, Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel “Migz” Zubiri denied allegations he handled infrastructure projects for senators when he was the Senate president from 2022 to 2024.

This, after former Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) secretary Manuel Bonoan testified before the Sandiganbayan that all senators in 2024 had at least P500-million in allocations for infrastructure projects under a “leadership fund” organized by the Senate president.

“As Senate President, I never requested, held, or handled any list of project requests from senators. I refused to handle any such list. No proposed budget amendments passed through our office,” Zubiri said in a statement.

According to Zubiri, all requests are coursed through the Senate Committee on Finance, which is the overseer of the budget process in the Senate.

The Senate majority leader explained that almost all legislators, from senators to members of the House of Representatives, introduce amendments to the budget which is “part of our responsibility as legislators: to help bring much-needed development to communities that have long been left behind.”

“I reiterate that there is nothing wrong with institutional amendments, for as long as projects are properly implemented, that they are neither ghost projects nor substandard projects, and that they are devoid of any influence from the proponent legislators that could lead to corruption,” Zubiri also said.

Ejercito, for his part, agreed on Zubiri’s take, saying the term “leadership fund”, which is also referred to as “allocable” was new to them.

Bonoan described the “allocables” as budget insertions in the National Expenditure Program (NEP) that Malacañang submits to Congress.

Ejercito said even Gatchalian, who was also asked about the leadership fund, also said he did not have it when he chaired the finance panel.

Nevertheless, Ejercito said he believes that not all budget insertions are bad: “There are bad and good.”

“As I mentioned, those allocables, the supposed pre-NEP insertion, we do not know about it,” he said.

“But in the natural, when you are Senate president, majority leader, finance chair, there would be so many requests that will come to you. Now we just forward (these requests), but it’s up to the agencies to approve, but that could have been charged to us,” he pointed out.

“But as far as we are concerned, there will be no leadership fund. I will continue this, because Senate President Win, when he handled the finance committee, said he did not have that,” he stressed.

Also under his watch, Ejercito reiterated that the finance panel would not accept any last-minute budget insertions, specially during the bicameral conference committee level.

“Amendments or insertions will only be made during the plenary budget deliberations themselves. Everything will be done on the floor, in open session. There will be no secret bicam meetings or so-called small bicam,” he said.