MANILA, Philippines — A new nationwide non-commissioned survey has found that most Filipinos believe blockchain technology can help stamp out corruption, with overwhelming support for a Senate measure seeking to put the national budget on the blockchain.
The study, conducted by research firm Tangere on September 4-5, showed that 55 percent of respondents were familiar with blockchain, and among them, 73 percent trust its security.
Awareness of the pending “Blockchain the Budget” bill is strikingly high at 89 percent, with 85 percent of those aware supporting its passage. Overall, 83 percent of all respondents said blockchain could be a powerful tool against corruption in government.
The findings point to strong public demand for transparency in government spending. Six in 10 Filipinos said they wanted blockchain-enabled features such as real-time disclosure of allocations, actual expenses, and remaining funds.
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The “Blockchain the Budget” Bill, filed by Senator Bam Aquino as Senate Bill 1330, seeks to make every peso of public funds traceable, transparent, auditable, and accessible to citizens in real time. Aquino noted that while the national budget was one of the government’s most important instruments, budget documents have long remained closed, highly technical, and difficult to understand — making oversight almost impossible even for those who wish to scrutinize them.
If enacted, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), in coordination with the Department of Budget and Management and the Commission on Audit (COA), would establish a blockchain-based budget system. All records would be stored as digital public assets (DPAs) accessible through a public portal, allowing citizens, the COA, and oversight bodies to independently verify the flow of funds down to agencies, projects, and beneficiaries.
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The legislative push comes as anomalies flagged by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. are now at the center of congressional probes, running alongside deliberations on the proposed P6.79-trillion 2026 budget — equivalent to 22 percent of gross domestic product and 7.4 percent higher than this year’s outlay.
According to Bayanichain (BYC) co-founder and CEO Paul Soliman, the survey highlights the growing awareness and trust of Filipinos in blockchain technology as a tool for transparency and accountability.
“The strong support for the Blockchain Budget Bill shows that our people are ready to embrace innovation that can help fight corruption and ensure every peso is properly accounted for,” Soliman said in a statement.
The non-commissioned survey sampled 1,400 participants nationwide through stratified random sampling, with a margin of error of ±2.57 percent at a 95 percent confidence level. Respondents were proportionally drawn from Northern and Central Luzon (23 percent), Metro Manila (12 percent), Southern Luzon and Bicol (22 percent), Visayas (20 percent), and Mindanao (23 percent).
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Tangere, a member of the Marketing and Opinion Research Society of the Philippines (MORES) and European Society for Opinion and Market Research (ESOMAR), conducted the study via its mobile app platform.
