No last-minute secret fund insertions in budget – Congress

MANILA, Philippines — There was no last-minute move by Congress to restore the P650-million confidential funds (CF) in the budgets for next year for the office of Vice President Sara Duterte and the Department of Education, which she also heads.

The appropriations committee heads of both houses of Congress, Sen. Sonny Angara and Ako Bicol Rep. Elizaldy Co gave the assurance at yesterday’s bicameral conference committee on the 2024 General Appropriations Bill held at the Manila Golf and Country Club in Makati.

“I don’t think so,” Angara said on the sidelines of the meeting when asked if the P500 million CF for the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the P150 million for DepEd would be restored.

The odds are not in the Vice President’s favor this time, unlike last year when the DepEd’s CF for 2023 slashed to P30 million by the Senate was restored to its original P150 million level during bicam, supposedly to help DepEd protect children from syndicates and communist recruitment.

For the 2024 budget, a restoration was ruled out after Duterte herself told Congress that she was no longer interested in seeking CF next year, following backlash for her use of secret funds traditionally reserved for intelligence and security agencies.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III first raised the possibility of Congress bringing back Duterte’s secret funds, saying – at a virtual briefing on Nov. 10 – that the “bicam has the power to introduce and restore anything.”

Angara said the Senate mostly adopted the House version of the bill realigning P1.23 billion in confidential funds from civilian to security agencies.

But while the bicam stripped Duterte’s offices of her CF, it left untouched the Office of the President (OP)’s P2.31 billion intelligence and P2.25 billion confidential funds, totaling P4.56 billion or almost half of its P10.7-billion budget next year.

“The OP needed that fund especially in these uncertain times of war, terrorism, hijacking, kidnapping,” Angara said.

The approved 2024 budget has a total budget of P9.82 billion confidential and intelligence funds (CIF).

Meanwhile, Co said the House of Representatives contingent in the bicam would study a special