Short answer. Yes, under the current law. Article 26 of the Revised Penal Code, as amended by Republic Act No. 10951 in 2017, classifies a fine as a light penalty if it is less than forty thousand pesos. This replaces the much lower thresholds in the original 1930 text.
What the law says
a light penalty, if it be less than Forty thousand pesos (₱40,000).
Revised Penal Code, Article 26 — When A Fine Is Afflictive. Read the full provision →
The three categories of fines under Article 26
Article 26 of the Revised Penal Code classifies fines into three tiers based on amount. A fine is an afflictive penalty if it exceeds one million two hundred thousand pesos. It is a correctional penalty if it is between forty thousand pesos and one million two hundred thousand pesos. And it is a light penalty if it is less than forty thousand pesos. These classifications matter because the severity of a penalty determines which rules on prescription, probation, and accessory penalties apply.
The 2017 amendment raised all the thresholds significantly
The amounts in Article 26 were updated by Republic Act No. 10951, enacted in 2017. The original 1930 Revised Penal Code used much lower figures throughout — amounts that inflation had made meaningless. Many printed copies and online reproductions of the Penal Code still show the old numbers. If a source you are reading refers to amounts far below the figures above, it is almost certainly using the pre-2017 version. The current law is the amended text. Always verify that the version of the Penal Code you are reading reflects the RA 10951 amendments.
Why the classification of a fine matters
Under the Revised Penal Code, whether a fine is light, correctional, or afflictive has practical consequences. The prescriptive period — how long the state has to prosecute the offense — depends in part on the nature of the penalty. Light penalties generally have shorter prescriptive periods. Whether a person may be granted probation, whether accessory penalties are imposed alongside the fine, and other procedural questions may also be affected by how the fine is classified. A fine that falls just below forty thousand pesos is a light penalty even if the offense itself carries a heavier penalty in the alternative.
Fines imposed as alternative penalties
Article 26 expressly covers both fines imposed as a single penalty and fines imposed as an alternative penalty — a situation where the law allows either imprisonment or a fine. The classification rule applies equally in both scenarios. So if a statute penalizes an act with either a short prison term or a fine below forty thousand pesos at the court's discretion, and the court imposes the fine, that fine is a light penalty for all purposes under the Revised Penal Code.