Gatchalian vows to improve Senate budget transparency portal

MANILA — Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian has vowed to improve the Senate Budget Transparency Portal and strengthen safeguards in infrastructure spending, emphasizing the need for greater transparency, detailed project information, and collaboration with civil society. 

Speaking at the PHINMA Policy Forum Series on “Building Infrastructure People Can Trust: Science, Transparency, and Citizen Participation,” Gatchalian admitted that the portal currently serves mainly as a repository of budget documents, leaving users to analyze the information themselves.

“Lahat po ng mga dokumento in-upload po namin dito… But admittedly, itong lahat ay parang dumping rin e. Dina-dump lang namin yung information dito, tapos bahala na kayong pag-aralan yan, which should not be the case,” the senator said. 

He said the Senate plans to improve the information available on the portal and explore providing budget analysis to help the public better understand government spending.

“So, in the next few months, we will improve, further, the information being given. And hopefully, we can also launch some form of analysis para makatulong rin kami sa pag-a-analyze ng budget,” he added.

Gatchalian also cited measures introduced starting 2026 to improve project monitoring, including requiring station numbers for roads and irrigation projects and geographical coordinates for farm-to-market roads.

“We insisted na yung mga roads lagyan ng station numbers. Even yung irrigation projects, lagyan ng station numbers. Before, wala ‘to,” he said.

“Even farm to market roads, nilagyan na po namin ng coordinates… So, work in progress po yung pag-i-improve natin ng transparency, and also checking the correct data,” added Gatchalian. 

Meanwhile, he acknowledged that lawmakers often focus on completing the budget within tight deadlines, leaving less time for a more “granular” examination of proposed allocations.

He said continued collaboration with civil society organizations is crucial to making the budget more responsive to public needs. 

As part of efforts to strengthen public participation, Gatchalian said the Senate also plans to include links to civil society organizations in the transparency portal. 

“One of the things that this year we will include in our transparency portal is a link to the CSOs, to Civil Society Organizations,” he said.

He stressed that a perfect budget may be difficult to achieve given competing interests and demands, but transparency, safeguards against corruption, and collaboration between government and civil society must remain central to the budget process. 

“Ang daming tug-of-war in the budget process. So, ang importante ngayon is to make sure that we keep our eye on the ball, which is maintaining transparency, maintaining the safeguards, and maintaining collaboration,” Gatchalian said.