Senator Aquilino 'Koko' Pimentel insisted that the the Office of the President's (OP) intelligence fund should be removed and the confidential fund should be reduced.

According to RH 28 Raymund Dadpaas, Pimentel made the statement after the Senate leadership said the upper chamber do not have a confidential and intelligence fund (CIF) for 2023 and 2024, and that the CIF has been removed from five civilian agencies of the government.

Pimentel said the OP is a civilian agency, and it does not work to gather intelligence information apart from the number of workloads in the said office.

He said it is better to leave the CIF in the field of intelligence gathering.

Earlier, the House of Representatives reported that it had removed the CIF from the Office of the Vice President (OVP), Department of Education (DepEd), Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), and Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).

However, Senate Majority Leader Joel Villanueva announced that he would fight for the DICT’s CIF after they conducted several hours of the Executive Session and he was convinced that the cybersecurity measures should be strengthened.

In a statement, Senate Secretary Atty. Renato Bantug denied the accusation that Senate have a CIF of over P331 million for 2023 and zero for 2024.

"The ₱331.9 million in the Senate's "Extraordinary and Miscellaneous Expenses" are used, among others, for meetings, seminars, conferences, public relations, and other activities of the chamber," he said.