Davao City Third District Representative Isidro Ungab bared over the weekend that the General Appropriation Act (GAA) 2025 is anomalous.
During the Basta Dabawenyo podcast, Ungab showed documents and revealed that some figures in the Bicameral Conference Committee (Bicam) report were missing like in the agricultural and fisheries modernization program of the Department of Agriculture (DA) wherein the budget for the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) and the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) were not indicated.
“Nahalata ko na maraming blanko and these are not ordinary figures as these reached billions of pesos,” he said.
Among the defects he observed was page SP 11 of the Bicam report, which says that the Agricultural and Fisheries Modernization Program is P146,335,937,000, however, in GAA it was only P126,798,221,000.
“Ibig sabihin merong discrepancy,” he said.
Ungab said there are several blank items that still need to be supplied with figures amounting to billions of pesos in the GAA 2025 under the
Department of Agriculture namely, NIA, the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization
Program, the Agricultural Input and Services, the National Program for Rice, Corn, High Value Crops Development, Organic Agriculture,
Livestock and Peri Urban Agriculture, Small Scale Irrigation Projects, Agricultural Machineries Equipment and Facilities, Production Support Services Sub-Program for Rice and Corn, the National Fisheries Program, Provision of Fishery on Farm/ Post Harvest
Equipment and Fisheries, PCA, Subsidy for National Irrigation Systems and Communal Irrigation Systems and under the Unprogrammed Appropriations.
“Why did the Bicameral Conference Committee members signed an
incomplete Bicameral Conference Committee report? Why did both Houses of Congress ratified an incomplete Bicameral Conference
Committee report and why did the President signed an incomplete 2025 General Appropriations Act?” Ungab asked.
Ungab added that these amendments or revisions are substantial and cannot be considered as typographical, grammatical and printing errors, that can be rectified by
the technical staff as authorized by the Omnibus Motion of the Bicameral Conference Committee.
Former President Rodrigo Duterte said if the Bicam report was approved despite its inaccuracy due to the missing figures or amount, it is not a valid legislation and Congress should act to correct it.
“Pagka putol putol yan o may kulang, that is not a valid budget for implementation as law. Its not only inaccurate but I think the budget is in totality invalid. Hindi ka puwedeng magblanko blanko diyan sa pera ng tao. I would like to remind the Congress, mali yan, its invalid, please correct it. Or recall the budget and demand an explanation kung bakit dumating sa inyo yan na ganon ka blanko. Para kang binigyan ng blankong cheke diyan na o sige bahala na kayo kung magkano ilagay ninyo and whoever corresponds to that particular item is free to just fill up the amount,” the former president said during the podcast.
Duterte called on the Congress not to mess up with the people’s money.
“Do not f*ck the people of the Philippines. Magkagulo tayo niyan. Nandiyan ‘yung military pati police, hindi papayag na ganoon. I know them. Kayong mga nasa bureaucracy, better stand up straight and be counted as a true Filipino. Otherwise, you are asking for your early demise,” he said.
Meanwhile, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin reacted to the former president and Ungab’s claims saying it is fake news.
“Some quarters, including a former president, have maliciously peddled fake news about President Marcos having signed the GAA of 2025 with certain parts of the enactment purposely left blank to enable the administration to simply fill in the amounts like in a blank check,” Bersamin said in a statement on Monday.
“The peddling of such fake news is outrightly malicious and should be condemned as criminal. No page of the 2025 National Budget was left unturned before the president signed it into law,” Bersamin added.
He said that all 4,057 pages of its two thick volumes (which were printed in fine print — with nearly sixty lines on each page) were exhaustively reviewed by hundreds of professional staff from Congress and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).
Bersamin also said that it is impossible for any funding items to be left blank.
“Anyone who conducts the same rigorous examination of the 2025 National Budget — which the public can view on the DBM website — will come to the same conclusion: that there is no program, activity, or project at all with blank appropriations in that carefully vetted law,” Bersamin said.
