The Philippine Constitution emphasizes the people's right to know, yet the country remains without a comprehensive Freedom of Information (FOI) or Right to Information (RTI) law.
According to a recent report, Uneven Transparency, the Right to Know Right Now (R2KRN) Coalition found that transparency is neither absent nor systematically embedded in laws enacted by the 19th Congress. Between July 2022 and June 2025, the 19th Congress enacted 378 laws. Of these, 55 laws (about 15%) contain transparency-related provisions, while the remaining 323 laws, or 85%, did not have comparable access-to-information clauses.
This uneven development of transparency in Philippine legislation suggests that transparency is selective, appearing in some statutes but not others. Some laws require reports, disclosures, audits, consultations, or public registries, while others do not.
The R2KRN review found that transparency provisions are concentrated in particular policy areas, with economic legislation accounting for nearly half of all laws with transparency-related provisions. Technology and digitalization laws also generally contain such measures.
The most common transparency mechanism is reportorial requirements, with 33 laws requiring reports, 25 containing disclosure provisions, 16 establishing oversight or review mechanisms, 16 requiring consultations, and 11 mandating audits.
Many reporting requirements are directed upward toward Congress, oversight bodies, regulators, or auditing institutions, which improve supervision within government. However, they do not necessarily guarantee that citizens themselves can demand and obtain information when they need it.
Recent legislation has increasingly incorporated public consultation requirements, aiming to involve stakeholders before key policy or financial decisions are finalized. However, without clear access to underlying information necessary to participate meaningfully, public consultations can become procedural exercises.
The review also highlights another challenge: transparency provisions increasingly coexist with privacy and confidentiality provisions. Among the 55 laws reviewed, the majority (62%) contain transparency provisions alone, while 15% combine transparency with privacy protections, and 11% have transparency and confidentiality clauses.
While having privacy and confidentiality provisions is not inherently problematic, the difficulty arises when these competing interests are governed by inconsistent standards. Legislative design reflects an attempt to balance disclosure with protection, but in the absence of consistent standards, piecemeal legislation risks producing ambiguity rather than clarity.
The current moment is significant, with both the House of Representatives and the Senate having approved their respective RTI bills on Third Reading. The measure awaits bicameral reconciliation, ratification, and presidential action before it can finally become law.
The challenge before Congress is to establish a legal framework that makes transparency a default feature of governance, rather than an occasional feature of selected statutes.
