Misinformation has no place in peace and development

September 11, 2025

The National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) urges all peace and development advocates to rally behind President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.’s clear directive to restore the ₱10 million allocation for each barangay under the Barangay Development Program (BDP). The President’s call is grounded on the wisdom of sustaining our hard-won peace gains and ensuring that cleared barangays are not left unfinished in their journey toward lasting stability.

The usual critics have seized on this call for an increase to paint a picture of unchecked budget growth. It has escalated to the point where misinformation about the BDP and the role of the NTF-ELCAC has overshadowed the more important truth that the critics try to sweep under the rug. These funds form the concrete roadmap for sustaining peace in once-conflict areas, and their impact is already being felt profoundly by the people on the ground.

To again set the record straight, from 2021 to 2026, BDP allocations have fluctuated, not steadily increased. In 2021, the program supported 822 barangays with ₱20 million each, totaling ₱16.44 billion. The following year, 2022, the number of beneficiaries grew to 1,406 barangays, but the allocation was reduced to ₱4 million each, totaling ₱5.62 billion. In 2023, 958 barangays received ₱6.6 million each, amounting to ₱6.33 billion. By 2024, the allocation dropped to ₱2.5 million per barangay for 864 barangays (₱2.16 billion), though this was later augmented by ₱5 million per barangay (₱4.32 billion). In 2025, 780 barangays once again received only ₱2.5 million each, or ₱1.95 billion in total. For 2026, the proposal is ₱10 million for each of the 808 cleared barangays, totaling ₱8.08 billion.

It is therefore misleading and malicious to claim that the BDP budget has ballooned year after year. The truth is that it has been repeatedly slashed, leaving many cleared barangays unable to complete vital infrastructure. What the President is asking for now is not an expansion but a restoration, so that farm-to-market roads can finally reach more cleared barangays, classrooms can be completed, health stations equipped, water systems expanded, and communities fully electrified.

Lastly, the NTF-ELCAC does not handle these funds. The Department of Budget and Management and the Bureau of the Treasury release them directly to local governments through Special Allotment Release Orders (SARO), Notice of Cash Allocation (NCA), and Notice of Debit Account (NADAI). Our role is to provide oversight and ensure the projects are delivered to the people. To call the BDP a “general’s pork barrel” is nothing more than a cheap shot meant to discredit the program, and worse, it is an insult to the barangays who are its true beneficiaries.

But everyone knows where the loudest criticism is coming from. It comes from those who seek to dismantle the people's gains against communist armed insurgency, who prefer that unresolved issues fester in once-conflict areas so that insurgency can again take root. In calling for the defunding of the BDP and the abolition of the NTF-ELCAC, it is not the Task Force they are attacking, nor even the President who has recognized the wisdom of sustaining these gains. Their real adversary is the masses themselves, who now benefit from roads, schools, and clinics instead of neglect, isolation, and violence.

The gains of peace rightly belong to the people and no amount of selective outrage should be allowed to take that away. We must resolutely fight the purveyors of misinformation because they have no place in our pursuit of just and lasting peace.

Undersecretary Ernesto C. Torres Jr.

Executive Director, National Secretariat

National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict