The Office of the President is studying a proposal to realign for education, health, housing and social services the multi-billion-peso confidential and intelligence funds, or CIF, in the P5.768-trillion proposed 2024 national budget.
This was revealed by ACT-CIS Partylist Rep. Erwin Tulfo, who stood as the sponsor of the OP budget during the debate in the House of Representatives on the P10.7-billion proposed budget for the Office of the President for next year.
“This is being studied, Mr. Speaker, by the government,” Tulfo said in response to ACT Teachers Partylist Rep. France Castro’s statement that “it is high time to remove this CIF.”
“Don’t give it to the civilian agency that has nothing to do with what we call confidential expenses, surveillance, and other things about intelligence,” Castro said.
Tulfo, however, expressed reservations about totally removing the CIF from the budget as “it is used to gather information on national security and the internal and external threats to the country.”
He said the Office of the President has allocated CIFs to seven agencies, amounting to P4.56 billion.
The seven agencies are the Presidential Situation Room, National Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Coordinating Committee, National Cybersecurity Inter-Agency Committee, Presidential Anti–Organized Crime Commission, Philippine Center on Transnational Crimes, Anti-Terrorism Council Project Management Council, and National Coast Watch System, all created under various executive orders of previous administrations.
Castro said the CIF has been prone to abuse.
In the proposed P5.768-trillion national budget, P9.2 billion will go to CIFs across all agencies
— P4.3 billion in confidential funds and P4.9 billion in intelligence funds.
The OP stands to receive P4.5 billion in confidential funds. In contrast, the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education, both under Vice President Sara Duterte, will receive P500 million and P150 million, respectively, or a total of P650 million.