Philippine Senator Bam Aquino is preparing to introduce a bill that would place the country’s national budget and financial transactions on a blockchain platform, a move he says will boost transparency and public oversight.
Key Takeaways:
- Senator Bam Aquino plans to propose putting the Philippine national budget on a blockchain.
- The move aims to ensure full transparency and public accountability for government spending.
- The proposal follows other blockchain initiatives in both the Philippines and the U.S. public sector.
Speaking at the Manila Tech Summit on Wednesday, Aquino said the proposal will be filed in the coming weeks and aims to make government budgeting fully trackable by the public.
“No one is crazy enough to put their transactions on blockchain, where every single step of the way will be logged and transparent to every single citizen. But we want to start,” he said, as quoted by Bilyonaryo.
Aquino Pushes for ‘Every Peso to Be Transparent and Accountable’
In a Facebook post, the senator emphasized his goal of building a system where every peso is “transparent and accountable.”
He acknowledged the difficulty of securing broad support for the initiative but noted that if successful, the Philippines could become the first country to put its entire budget on-chain.
The announcement comes just weeks after the Department of Budget and Management launched a blockchain-based document verification system using the Polygon network.
That initiative, led by Undersecretary Maria Francesca Del Rosario, was designed to combat fake documents and deepfake threats. It remains unclear whether Aquino’s proposed bill would integrate with this platform.
Globally, blockchain is gaining traction among policymakers. Just this week, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced plans to publish official economic data, including GDP figures, using blockchain infrastructure.
“The Department of Commerce is going to start issuing its statistics on the blockchain because you are the crypto president. And we are going to put out GDP on the blockchain so people can use the blockchain for data distribution.”
According to Lutnick, the Department of Commerce is “ironing out all the details” but expects to expand the blockchain publishing model across other government agencies once the system is in place.
The move comes in the wake of the Deploying American Blockchains Act of 2025 (H.R. 1664), which passed the House of Representatives in June with bipartisan support and is currently under Senate review.
Philippines Advances Blockchain Push with Bitcoin Reserve Proposal
The Philippines is emerging as a testing ground for public-sector blockchain initiatives.
Congressman Miguel Luis Villafuerte recently introduced a separate bill to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve of up to 10,000 BTC over five years.
According to the bill, the holdings could only be sold under strict conditions, such as retiring sovereign debt, and no more than 10% of the reserve may be liquidated in any two-year period after the minimum holding period expires.
As of November 2024, the Philippines’ debt had risen to ₱16.09 trillion ($285 billion), with domestic obligations accounting for nearly 68% of the total.
Supporters argue that diversifying national reserves beyond gold and the US dollar is essential for financial stability, particularly as other countries accelerate their own Bitcoin strategies.
Under the bill, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) would oversee the program, purchasing 2,000 BTC annually and placing them into cold storage facilities distributed across the country.
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