(UPDATE) LAWMAKERS on Sunday signed the bicameral conference committee report on the reconciled P6.7 trillion 2026 General Appropriations Bill, setting the stage for its ratification and submission to the Palace in a one-day extended session on Monday. The Palace earlier said President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is expected to sign the budget bill into law in the first week of January 2026. Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian said human development was the “overall direction” of the 2026 budget as lawmakers funded education, health, and agriculture more. “These three sectors are important to further develop our economy,” he said in Filipino prior to the signing of the bill. Gatchalian, head of the Senate contingent to the bicam, said the reconciled version of the budget “will be uploaded to the portals of the Senate and House of Representatives for transparency.” He said the enrolled bill contains 4,300 pages and was proofread five times. The other members of the Senate contingent, Sens. Loren Legarda, Joseph Victor Ejercito, and Francis Pangilinan, also signed the Bicam report. Legarda earlier raised the importance of responsible and integrity-driven budgeting. She said responsible planning and clear priorities lead to real benefits and improvements in the lives of Filipino families. “Budgeting must come from a full year of honest computation, clear priorities, and genuine respect for taxpayers’ money,” the senator added. Legarda said in response to public concerns on overpricing, weak project identification, and misuse of flood control funds, the Bicam adopted safeguards to make infrastructure spending more transparent, traceable and accountable. She said a key safeguard is the “strict requirement” that infrastructure projects carry specific details, such as clear geographic coordinates, stationing and identifiable locations, and, for local projects, supporting resolutions from concerned local government units. “With these requirements, every road, bridge, building, and flood control structure can be traced and audited from approval to implementation, and communities will know exactly where projects are supposed to be built,” she said. Legarda said the construction materials price data across the Department of Public Works and Highway projects was revised. This move was meant to recalibrate the material, logistics and hauling costs to reflect actual market conditions on a project-by-project basis. She said this correction of systemic overpricing across more than 10,000 projects generated substantial savings while ensuring that legitimate projects remain implementable, workers’ jobs are protected, and contractor pricing is not arbitrarily distorted. Selected construction and convergence programs previously implemented solely by DPWH were reassigned to agencies, such as the Department of National Defense, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Education. Infrastructure may now be implemented through national agencies, local government units, public–private partnerships, or hybrid arrangements, subject to accreditation and safeguards, to improve delivery and accountability.