Embedding Bantay Piso into the Senate Budget Transparency Portal

Mariecon B. Aranda-Esguerra
Romel C. Patacsil
Atty. Noemi S. Sabornido
Carlo Antonio C. Juarez
Atty. Leslie Ann S. Leong-Anudin

Senate of the Philippines
Appropriations and Finance – Managers Track
Course on Designing Citizen-Centered Innovative Solutions in the Public Sector
2025

Public funds are not merely financial instruments; they represent a shared responsibility between government and society, rooted in trust and accountable stewardship. Yet for many Filipinos, the question “Saan napupunta ang pera ng bayan?” remains unanswered—not because information is unavailable, but because transparency has long been defined as access to documents rather than access to participation and accountability. In a context where legislative oversight is often compressed into a narrow budget season and where civic voice is limited, trust in public financial management continues to erode. Global public finance diagnostics reinforce this urgency: the Open Budget Survey identifies limited opportunities for meaningful public engagement, while the PEFA assessment assigns a poor rating to legislative scrutiny of audit reports, signaling systemic weaknesses in fiscal oversight.

The Bantay Piso Project, authored by the CBILLS scholars of the Legislative Budget Research and Monitoring Office (LBRMO), offers a structural reform pathway that converts oversight into a continuous, participatory, and data-driven accountability cycle. Anchored in New Public Governance, Deliberative Democracy Theory, Developmental State Theory, and Rational Choice Institutionalism, the initiative introduces mechanisms such as citizen booking for hearings and TWGs, public submission of questions, Budget Question Hours, Kapihan dialogues, red-flag reporting tools, and access to dashboards and audit digests—creating a structured accountability loop connecting legislators, agencies, and citizens. Its integration into the Senate Budget Transparency Portal expands transparency into interactive oversight and participatory monitoring .

Ultimately, Bantay Piso advances a governance paradigm that positions fiscal accountability as a shared democratic function, rebuilding institutional legitimacy and ensuring that every peso is seen, scrutinized, and responsibly spent.