DPWH budget adjustment adds P 16.5B to PhilHealth
The state-run Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) received a significant boost in its budget for 2026 after members of the bicameral conference committee approved an additional P16.5 billion for its funding.
At the committee meeting on Thursday, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian confirmed the budget adjustment made for PhilHealth. The increase is expected to cover the deficiency in PhilHealth’s share of state revenues coming from “sin” taxes or the excise on alcohol and tobacco.
The panel initially approved a budget of P103.2 billion for PhilHealth. With the increase, the amount now stands at P129.7 billion.
The additional funding was the result of a recomputation done on the costs of some 10,000 projects under the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), which was affected by a P45-billion cut earlier made by the Senate.
P20B ‘savings’
The cut was later modified upon the request of Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon, who admitted that his agency had submitted an insufficient set of data that became the Senate’s basis for the reduction. Dizon also formally apologized to the Senate committee on finance.
Gatchalian said the Senate team was able to complete in just two days the new computations based on a revised Construction Materials Price Data (CMPD) provided by Dizon.
“So after two days, we have applied (the new CMPD) to all 10,000 projects, and the savings generated is at P20.7 billion,’’ said Gatchalian, who chairs the Senate finance committee.
“So these are the savings obtained from the reduction of overpriced materials. They factored in logistics, including hauling costs and other costs, so prices became more near-actual—still not actual, but near-actual costs,” the senator added.
The results, he said, made him more confident that there would no longer be overpriced DPWH projects under its 2026 budget.
The remaining P4.2 billion from the DPWH savings will go to the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Fund.
According to Gatchalian, Senators Loren Legarda, Pia Cayetano and Risa Hontiveros made the suggestion to realign some of the savings from the DWPH recomputation to PhilHealth.
They noted that the national government had not been remitting the amount needed by the state health insurer, Gatchalian said, citing their reason.
“The remittance to PhilHealth for 2026 should be P69.7 billion, but what the government intends to remit through the GAA (General Appropriations Act) is P53.2 billion, which means it is short by P16.5 billion,” he explained.
The Senate earlier cut P45 billion from the DPWH budget for 2026, based on Dizon’s own observation that the material costs for some of the agency’s projects were overpriced.
But on the second day of the bicameral deliberations, he made a presentation to point out errors in the Senate computation, noting that some 10,000 projects would end up underfunded as a result.
