Lawmaker: OP spent all P4.5-B secret funds in 2024, but…
Questions over its confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) amounting to billions of pesos continue to hound the Office of the President (OP), after a lawmaker noted that it fully spent the funds last year but left more than a fifth of its regular budget unobligated or unused.
ACT Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio raised the matter during plenary deliberations on the OP’s proposed P27-billion budget in 2026, where he cited the OP’s Statement of Appropriations, Allotments, Obligations, Disbursements and Balances saying it fully obligated its CIF for every quarter of 2024.
That year, the OP received P4.5 billion for its CIF, which meant it received P1.1 billion in cash per quarter.
In contrast, the OP was able to obligate only 78 percent of its regular funding in the same year, Tinio said.
Ballooning amount
“Why is it that when it comes to your CIF, not a single centavo is left? But when we’re talking about the regular budget—which is subject to the normal reporting and accounting procedures of the Commission on Audit (COA)—you’re a bit slow, at 78 percent (obligation rate)?” he asked.
The OP’s sponsoring lawmaker, Bataan Rep. Albert Garcia, explained that the OP spent its CIF on the activities of its presidential situation room, the national AML/CFT (antimoney laundering and combating the financing of terrorism) coordinating committee, the national cybersecurity interagency committee, the People’s Center on Transnational Crime, and the Anti-Terrorism Council project management center.
The OP’s CIF, which now totals P4.56 billion annually or roughly a third of the Palace’s budget, has steadily grown over the years.
Confidential expenses pertain to surveillance activities in civilian government agencies, while intelligence expenses are those related to information-gathering activities of uniformed and military personnel directly related to national security.
Since 2015, the OP traditionally requested only up to P250 million each for confidential and intelligence purposes until former President Rodrigo Duterte raised them tenfold to P2.5 billion in 2017 up to 2019.
By 2020, these doubled to P4.5 billion—an amount sustained under President Marcos.
Safeguards
Tinio recalled how some Marcos allies earlier questioned the use of CIF by Vice President Sara Duterte, who had requested unprecedented amounts in 2023 and 2024 for both the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education that she used to head, an agency that traditionally does not require CIF.
But “when the new president came in, instead of reverting to the old practice and prove that the Duterte administration’s use of CIF was an aberration, the Marcos Jr. administration continued it,” Tinio noted.
Its growing reliance on such funds, he added, was creating a “huge loophole” since such expenditures are exempt from the procurement law and governed only by a special Department of Budget and Management-COA circular.
Garcia confirmed the figures but said the increase for the OP in 2023—Mr. Marcos’ first full year—was introduced in the Senate and not requested by Malacañang.
He also stressed that the funds were subject to liquidation and reporting to the Speaker, the Senate President and the COA.
