Kezo Andre Javier

Facing the looming threat of a reenacted budget, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed the controversial 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA), instituting the P6.3-trillion national budget for this year. While the final version of the budget saw upsides like the defunding of the Office of the Vice President which has been subject to scrutiny due to unaccounted funds, it still had a huge chunk for the Congress’ pet project Ayuda Para sa Kapos ang Kita Program (AKAP).


All throughout the budget deliberations, it is the AKAP that earned congressmen the ire of many, with critics tagging it as a source of corruption. Intended to help low-income minimum wage earners amidst the rising inflation, the program provided financial assistance ranging from P1,000 to P10,000 to almost five million beneficiaries in 2024. For this year, a total of P26-billion has been allocated for AKAP. But amidst the controversy, the 2025 GAA may have taken a step towards making AKAP free from politics.

To put it into context, the 1987 Constitution gives Congress the “power of the purse” which allows them to control the budget of the whole government. This is because the national budget, despite being proposed by the executive, will have to be approved by the House of Representatives and the Senate before it can be signed into law. This provision gives leeway for congressmen and senators to insert budget line items, including pet projects like the AKAP, as they see fit.

In the past, lawmakers held discretionary funds in the form of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF). However, the Supreme Court ruled it as unconstitutional, which means that legislators are not allowed to have budgets which they can allocate and implement on their own as the budget execution is solely under the executive department. For critics, AKAP served the same purpose, especially when congressmen appear in the cash aid distribution themselves. This paves the way for the program to be politicized, especially with the coming midterm elections that will see a number of congressmen running for reelection.

To resolve this, the final budget for 2025 placed AKAP under conditional implementation, which means that the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), and the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) will have to first issue guidelines for the program implementation before any budget is released. While the final guidelines are still being ironed out, DSWD Secretary Rex Gatchalian has already said that election candidates are banned from distribution sites for AKAP to keep the program from being used for political gain. Further rules will be set to make sure that the aid reaches the most deserving beneficiaries.

Aside from this, the implementation of AKAP falls under the DSWD, DOLE, and NEDA, which means that congressmen must not have any hand in the implementation of the social welfare program. This should be enough to put an end to the tradition of seeing politicians in cash aid dole outs. However, it remains to be seen whether the government can actually prohibit this kind of occurrence – especially with many politicians holding onto patronage politics for electoral wins.

It can be argued that corruption is inherent in the Philippine government. Lawmakers may have been explicitly banned from holding pork barrels in the past, but they have been more creative in coming up with ways to insert themselves into government programs to gain credit and political capital. While this practice is untolerable, preventing it should not come at the expense of low-income Filipinos who actually deserve aid. The move towards insulating AKAP from politics is already a great step against corruption, but it all boils down to whether politicians can actually be prevented from leveraging the program for the elections. Congress may have the power of the purse to insert whatever budget items they want, but it is imperative to keep this power in check because abusing it puts the public coffers in grave danger.