The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has released 80.7 percent of the government’s full-year 2025 budget as of March, the agency’s data showed.
A report posted on its website on Thursday said the DBM has released P5.107 trillion of the P6.326 trillion 2025 full-year program as of March 31.
The remaining balance for the year is P1.219 trillion.
In the comparable period a year ago, the government released P4.799 trillion, equivalent to 83.2 percent of the 2024 full-year budget.
In a Viber message on Thursday, DBM Undersecretary Goddes Hope Libiran confirmed that the lower percentage share of release over the programmed budget so far this year, compared with the comparable period in 2024 was still due to the Congress-Introduced Changes and Adjustments (CICAs), which needed to be covered by a separate Special Allotment Release Order (SARO).
The DBM had said that for the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA), 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.
The P757 billion budget adjustments are subject to a process called FISARO, or For Issuance of SARO, the DBM said in a statement earlier this 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 served as an added safeguard to prevent misuse of the budget, ensuring that increases or new items introduced by Congress were in line with the government’s cash programming, prudent fiscal management, and have been approved by the president, and the budget rules and guidelines.
Meanwhile, the DBM report showed that allotments released to the Cabinet departments totaled P3.434 trillion as of March 2025, or 93 percent of the 2025 program.
These included funds allotted to agencies under the executive branch, congress, the judiciary and other constitutional offices.
