Senate finance panel approves DBM’s P3.1-B budget for 2027

MANILA, Philippines — The Senate finance subcommittee approved the proposed P3.125-billion budget of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) for 2027 on Thursday.

The DBM trimmed its original P5.780-billion funding request for fiscal year (FY) 2027 by P2.655 billion, bringing its proposed budget down to P3.125 billion without compromising essential services and priority reforms.

The proposed FY 2027 allocation under the National Expenditure Program is also P444.23 million, or 12.45 percent, lower than the department’s FY 2026 budget of P3.57 billion.

Budget Secretary Kim Robert De Leon assured senators that no public service would be adversely affected by the cut.

READ: Making sense of the 2027 national budget

“This is the classic example of DBM practicing what it preaches,” De Leon said.

“We have some continuing appropriations that we are recalibrating and even the implementation of the projects. But one thing we can assure the chamber is that no service will be adversely affected by a lower budget allocation. We are just spending more efficiently, revisiting whether we really need these items,” he explained. /mcm