January 21, 2025
Manila – Malacañang on Monday termed as “lies” the alleged blank line items in the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) or the amounts that were allegedly supposed to be filled at the behest of President Marcos and his close aides.
In an interview in Taguig City, the president denied accusations by former President Rodrigo Duterte and his allies that the 2025 GAA is full of gaps.
“He's lying. He's a [former] Mr. President, he knows you can't pass GAA with a blank,” he told reporters after the launch of the Tesla Center in the Philippines.
Read: Bersamin on Budget 2025: 'A plan without blank appropriations'
Marcos was responding to Duterte's accusations against the bicameral conference committee on alleged irregularities in the 2025 GAA report, which was aired in an online podcast on Saturday.
Davao City Rep. Isidro Ongabu found gaps in the reports approved by committees of both houses of Congress, saying it was the first time he had seen such a thing in his 15 years in the House of Representatives.
Ongabu, the former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, claimed that several sections of Bickam’s report were left blank so that amounts could later be filled in at their request.
But he added that since the president had signed the GAA on December 30, there was no option but to challenge it in the Supreme Court.
difference
The blank items in the final bicameral report approved by the Senate and House of Representatives on December 11 were said to be for the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) and the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA), both agencies under the Department of Agriculture.
Ungab specifically cited line 49 of page 11 of SP 11 of the report, where the amount of P74.57 billion next to the acronym NIA was deleted and replaced with a blank.
Another project opposite the abbreviation PCA also had P889.06 million deleted and replaced with a blank.
Under these items, a total of P104 billion was also deleted and replaced with a blank.
He also pointed out that in the SP 11 report of both houses, 146.33 billion pesos were allocated for the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Program, but in the GAA, the program was only 125.72 billion pesos, which is a difference.
Ungab said there were several pages with blank items, and he initially found at least 13.
“Through all these findings, we can see that the bicam report is flawed, why was it signed by members? The House and Senate approved this flawed bicameral report,” Ungarb said.
people's money
Duterte, who was part of a five-person panel on the podcast, criticized the “incomplete” report on the national budget, calling the blanks “unacceptable.”
“[If it’s approved with blank items]this is not valid legislation,” Duterte said during the “Basta Dabawenyo” special broadcast live on Facebook on January 18. “[If something is lacking]this is not an effective implementation budget,” he said. “Not only is that inaccurate, but I think the budget is ineffective.”
The former president also compared blank items to issuing blank checks, where the check holder simply writes the amount before cashing it.
“[You can’t do that with] People's money. everything [in the budget] Must be explained; clear, patent, and beyond doubt. [This money has to be spent for this particular item]… You can’t leave anything empty to be filled later. This is not allowed by law. “I want to remind Congress that this is wrong.”
Duterte said the proposed amounts for each line item in the budget cannot be entrusted to anyone other than lawmakers.
“The amounts that follow each item must be accurate and cannot be corrected after the law is passed,” he said. “These are important and cannot be classified as typographical or grammatical errors, especially if [those had] It has nothing to do with Congress’s legal intent. Otherwise, it's forgery or forgery, and you could go to jail for it.
fake news
But the president took exception to his predecessor's comments.
“[Duterte is] Lying because he knew full well that it would never happen. Throughout the history of the Philippines, we have not allowed to have a GAA that did not specify the name of the project and how much money was allocated,” he noted. “So, it's a lie.”
He urged doubters to carefully read the 2025 GAA, which is available online through the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) website.
“They don't need to comb through every line of the budget. They can just look it up online and find what critics call a 'blank check,' and they can prove what I'm saying is true: that it's a lie,” he said.
Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin said Duterte and his allies were peddling “fake news.”
“The act of spreading fake news like this is downright malicious and should be treated as a crime. The 2025 state budget has been rummaged through before the president signed it into law.
Bersamin added: “The former president and his associates should have known better that the GAA cannot contain blank projects.”
The 2025 GAA, which totals 4,057 pages and is printed in two volumes, underwent “exhaustive review” by hundreds of people in Congress and the DBM, according to the executive secretary.
He said: “This meticulous line-by-line review is a pre-enactment check carried out by dedicated civil servants to ensure there are no discrepancies in the amounts allocated to the GAA.”
Bersamin added: “There is no way any funding program has been left blank, as misleading and malicious sources claim.”
