The government on Monday said the country would need P429 billion if the US-Iran war drags on for the rest of the year. For many, the first question is where to get that much money.
But that is not the real issue.
The government can find money in a crisis. It always does. Funds can be redirected, realigned, and repurposed. The real test begins after that: whether the money will be used cleanly, and whether it will reach the people it is meant to help fast enough to matter.
A fund this large demands close monitoring for the simple reason that we can no longer afford another corruption issue in the middle of a national emergency. We are talking about almost half a trillion pesos. Every peso misspent means less fuel support for drivers, less relief for families, and less breathing room for businesses already absorbing higher costs.
And misuse is only half the danger. Delay is the other half.
The slow delivery of aid has long been one of the Philippines’ oldest governance problems, and it is showing again. Three weeks after the Marcos administration announced its Unified Package for Livelihoods, Industry, Food, and Transport, or UPLIFT, tens of thousands of PUV drivers were still waiting for aid. For people who live on daily earnings, three weeks is not a small delay. It is already a wound.
These bottlenecks should no longer exist in 2026. Something as basic as maintaining an updated national list of PUV drivers should have been done years ago. If that system already existed, government would not need to scramble every time a crisis hits. It could send aid directly through e-wallets or linked accounts, with fewer layers, less handling, and less opportunity for leakage. That would mean faster relief for beneficiaries and lower administrative costs for government.
Digitalization is a basic crisis infrastructure. A government that cannot identify and reach its beneficiaries quickly will always respond late. A government that still depends on fragmented records and slow manual processes will always spend more time processing than helping. If we want to be better prepared for future crises, digitalization has to move from the margins to the center of governance.
But the job of government does not end with emergency aid. After crisis response comes recovery, and recovery depends on whether businesses can move, hire, and grow.
That becomes harder when the government itself makes doing business more difficult. Last year, Senator Alan Peter Cayetano flagged the worsening business registration process, which now takes far longer than it used to. He also warned against the abuse of BIR Letters of Authority by corrupt officials who use them to pressure businesses, whether big or small.
His point was that when businesses thrive, the economy moves with them. More business means more jobs, more taxes, and more growth.
That is the bigger lesson here. The Philippines does not just need money in a crisis. It needs a government that can move that money cleanly, quickly, and directly. And after the crisis, it needs a government that helps businesses grow instead of trapping them in red tape.###