P500-B ‘allocable, nonallocable’ items found in proposed 2026 DPWH budget

MANILA, Philippines—Approximately P500 billion was identified as “allocable and non-allocable” items in the proposed budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) for 2026, as revealed in the Senate late Tuesday night.

“Allocables” are projects distributed to different districts based on their need, population and size of the area, while “non-allocables” are national in scope, such as national roads and bridges, according to Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate committee on finance and sponsor of the DPWH budget.

“I think the division there lies in what the local government officials, including congressmen, can recommend and change in terms of allocable projects, and what they cannot change because those are national projects,” Gatchalian explained during the Senate plenary discussion on the DPWH budget.

He later said that his own understanding of the “allocable and non-allocable” projects was confirmed by  DPWH officials.

According to Sen. Loren Legarda, the P500 billion was detailed in a list the DPWH submitted to the Senate Legislative Budget Research and Monitoring Office.

Of the amount, P400 billion was tagged as allocable, Legarda said.

“But there’s a portion of the total of P500 billion in the budget where there’s P100 (billion) that is, as you said, maybe national in scope, whatever it is, that can’t be changed, that can’t be subjected to errata,” she pointed out.

Gatchalian noted that the DPWH list was still based on the National Expenditure Program or Malacanang’s original proposal of the P6.792 trillion national budget for 2026, and he is still requesting an updated list after the House of Representatives’ approval of the General Appropriation Bill (HGAB). 

Legarda backed this request, as she anticipated drastic changes in the GAB.

“So what we need to review and to see what are the items in the P100 billion non-allocable, the untouchable projects, because it evolved after the HGAB,” she pointed out.

“If we can’t understand certain district projects, what more the so-called non-allocable?” she asked.

Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson earlier tagged “allocable” as the new pork barrel based on their review of the 2025 national funding.

Their initial scrutiny of this year’s budget, he said, showed that the House leadership got “P143.5 billion in allocables. Party lists also had allocables, he said.

“It’s just now that I heard of allocables. An allocable is equivalent to pork barrel because it allows items to be funded before they are identified,” Lacson was quoted in a Nov. 17 press release from his office.

DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon has already vowed to scrap from the 2027 budget these allocable and nonallocable funds, which were already in place long before he took over the department in September. /apl/abc