MANILA, PHILIPPINES — Philippine Senator Bam Aquino plans to file a bill to place the national budget on a blockchain, aiming to make government spending transparent, he told attendees at the Manila Tech Summit on Wednesday, Aug. 27.
“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,” Aquino said, according to local outlet Bilyonaryo.
In a Facebook post, he described the idea as “blockchain-based budgeting to make every peso transparent and accountable.”
Representatives for Aquino did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to The Block.
While moving the entire national budget on-chain would be new, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has piloted related tech. It recently launched a BayaniChain-powered system on Polygon that publishes cryptographic hashes of Special Allotment Release Orders (SAROs) and Notices of Cash Allocation (NCAs) to deter deepfakes and document fraud.
In the setup, documents remain off-chain; the blockchain acts as a tamper-evident log.
BayaniChain added that the blockchain won’t end corruption but can make accountability harder to evade, laying groundwork for broader government use.
Aquino’s proposal would build on these early steps, potentially scaling from specific fiscal documents to a public-facing ledger of budget flows.
Meanwhile, Congressman Miguel Luis “Migz” Villafuerte has also filed House Bill No. 421 to create a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, which would require the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to acquire 2,000 Bitcoins annually for five years, with a 20-year lockup.
The Philippines is not alone in exploring blockchain for public data. In the United States, officials have discussed publishing some economic statistics, including GDP, on a blockchain, though details remain unclear. Other countries, such as Estonia and Georgia, already use blockchain in land registries and digital identity systems, showing its potential in governance.
If realized, the Philippines could pioneer an on-chain budget system that tracks public funds in near real time, helping deter fraud and build trust. Key design choices—public vs. permissioned chains, what data goes on-chain vs. off-chain, and privacy safeguards—will determine feasibility. And the debate over Bitcoin reserves underscores a broader question: how should technology shape governance, and who benefits most?
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