THE Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has released 64.9 percent of the national budget for full-year 2025 as of January, DBM data showed.
According to data posted on the DBM website, P4.1 trillion of the P6.33 trillion 2025 full-year program has been released as of January 31.
The remaining balance for the year is P2.22 trillion.
In the same month last year, the government released a larger amount of P4.49 trillion, or 77.9 percent of the 2024 full-year budget.
“Last year, there were no significant Congress-Introduced Changes and Adjustments (CICAs) that needed to be covered by a separate Special Allotment Release Order (SARO), thus, 77 percent had been comprehensively released,” Budget Assistant Secretary Rhea Dela Vega told Malaya Business Insight via Viber on Thursday.
“For the 2025 GAA (General Appropriations Act), a total of P757 billion CICAs, involving 12,770 programs, activities and projects have been placed under conditional implementation consistent with the President’s Veto Message,” she added.
The P757 billion budget adjustments are subject to a process called FISARO, or For Issuance of SARO, the DBM said in a statement at the start of the year, citing the insertions made by lawmakers in the 2025 GAA requiring a special release order before funds could be disbursed.
The release order will only be given once agencies meet the necessary requirements and secure approvals from the executive secretary and the Office of the President.
The DBM then said this serves as an added safeguard to prevent misuse of the budget, ensuring that increases or new items introduced by Congress are in line with the government’s cash programming, prudent fiscal management, and have been approved by the president, and the budget rules and guidelines.
Cabinet allotments P2.8T
Meanwhile, the DBM report showed that allotments released to the Cabinet departments totaled P2.8 trillion as of January 2025, or 75.9 percent of the 2024 program.
These include funds allotted to agencies under the Executive Branch, Congress, the Judiciary and other constitutional offices.
Releases for special purpose funds (SPFs) amounted to P109.23 billion, or 20.6 percent of the full-year program, the DBM data showed.
SPFs are budgetary allocations under the General Appropriations Act and allotted to specific socio-economic activities, such as budgetary support in favor of government corporations, local government units, contingent fund, miscellaneous personnel benefits fund, national disaster risk reduction and management fund and pension and gratuity funds.
Allotment releases for automatic appropriations, or allocations programmed annually and for some other period prescribed by law, amounted to P1.19 trillion, or 56.5 percent of the release on program.
These include this year’s retirement and life insurance premium requirements, national tax allotment, block grant, pension of ex-president and ex-president widows, special account in the general fund, net lending, interest payments and tax expenditures fund and customs duties and taxes.
