Executive Secretary Ralph Recto says President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to sign the Philippines’ P6.793-trillion budget for 2026 in the “first week of January.”

“First week of January,” Recto said when asked when the President intended to sign the new national budget into law.

This means the government will have a re-enacted budget several days as the law mandates the government to re-use the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) until a new spending bill is signed into law.

 Several House minority members are expected to vote against the passage of the 2026 national budget due to “more than P200-billion” in unprogrammed funds, Caloocan Rep. Edgar Erice earlier said.

“Unprogrammed funds are unconstitutional,” Erice said, citing a recent opinion from the Supreme Court.

“Dapat yung budget of expenditures ng gobyerno, dapat may katapat na source of revenue. Kumbaga sa budget ng isang pamilya, bakit ka bibili ng isang bagay na wala pa namang pagkukunan na sahod o kita?” he said.

“If they will insist on putting the unprogrammed funds in the national budget and if the President signs it, I will have no recourse but to go to the Supreme Court and question the presence of the unprogrammed funds under the 2026 GAA,” he said.

In the 2024 and 2025 budgets, the House and Senate leaderships placed several big ticket projects — such as the Metro Manila subway and the Philippine National Railway elevated railway — under unprogrammed funds and gave their original allocations to flood control projects, Erice said.

Earlier this week, Malacañang said that Marcos has begun “mobilizing his team to facilitate the immediate review” of the spending plan that the bicameral conference committee approved last week.

Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson, for his part, supports a few days of 2026 under a re-enacted budget.

“This is exactly what I said earlier – better a reenacted budget in January, or even in the first quarter of 2026, than rushing the passage of a national budget that is not responsive to the call of the times, amidst the yet unresolved investigations on the misuse and abuse of the current and previous expenditure programs, particularly involving flood control projects,” he said in a statement.

Senate Finance Committee Chair Sherwin Gatchalian, meanwhile, expressed respect for the Palace’s prerogative.

“We acknowledge that submitting the budget to the Executive on December 29 is 2 days before the new year, and the Executive needs sufficient time to review the 4,000+ page enrolled copies of the budget,” he said.

“The prudent course of action is to move the signing to January 5 to ensure that every provision is thoroughly reviewed.”