PRESIDENT Marcos Jr. yesterday directed government agencies to revisit their budgets and determine if funding for their priority projects this year have been slashed or cut amid the huge difference between the original spending plan submitted by Malacañang and the final 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA).
During the 18th Cabinet meeting, the first for this year, Marcos said he would sit down with each department and find out what happened to their budgets, especially for critical projects.
The President said he wants to ensure that the government’s focus remains on programs and projects that are critical to the administration’s socioeconomic program.
“We have to reexamine so that the programs that we wanted – that we put in the NEP (National Expenditure Plan) — can somehow be restored,” he said.
“For the rest of the departments, I need you to give me the priorities – the things that we prioritized in the NEP that were removed in terms of budgeting, in terms of appropriations. So, what are those? In each department, what are those that are absolutely critical to the socioeconomic program as we delivered to the Congress? Paano natin ibabalik kasi critical ‘yung mga program na nawala (how do we restore them because those that have been removed are critical),” he added.
The Presidential Communications Office (PCO), in a news release, said among the budget cuts that the President highlighted during the Cabinet meeting was the P12 billion reduction in the budget for the maintenance of roads, the P500 million slashed from the funding for routine maintenance of bridges, and the P21 billion budget cut for feasibility studies.
Marcos signed into law the P6.326 trillion GAA for 2025 last December 30 but vetoed more than P190 billion worth of line items and imposed conditional implementation on certain items to ensure prudent utilization of public funds.
The 2025 expenditure program is 9.7 percent higher than the 2024 budget of P5.768 trillion and 22 percent of the projected FY 2025 gross domestic product (GDP).
Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, meanwhile, reiterated that the education sector still received a higher allocation under the 2025 budget, which complied with the constitutional requirement to prioritize the education sector.
This developed as some sectors questioned the inclusion of the budgets of the Philippine National Police Academy (PNPA) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in the education sector, which made it higher than the budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).
Bersamin, in a briefing, said the language of the Constitution was not specific and education must be looked at with a broader understanding.
“Before, the treatment was ang budget ng education was only that allocated to DepEd (Department of Education). That was the wisdom at that time. But then, so many things have happened. The education responsibility has been shifted to other government agencies,” he said.
He said this means that DepEd is not the only agency in the education sector, but it has the greater portion of the education pie.
Bersamin said the other educational institutions include the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), state universities and colleges (SUCs) under the Commission Higher Education (CHED), as well as the PMA, PNPA among others.
As this developed, Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista said cuts in the Department of Transportation’s (DOTr) 2025 budget would have a minimal impact on the 16 infrastructure flagship projects (IFPs) under his agency that need to be implemented as soon as possible.
Bautista said while the DOTr saw “some reductions” in its budget, it mostly covered foreign-assisted projects which would still be continued using the loan proceeds.
“It has a very minor effect,” he said, adding that during the Cabinet meeting, the President had also ordered the DOTr and other concerned government agencies to work together to ensure that the flagship transport projects would be implemented before the end of his term in 2028
He said an inter-agency committee has also been formed to resolve the issues delaying and affecting the implementation of the infrastructure projects such as right-of-way issues, permits and licenses, and funding, among others.
The inter-agency committee is composed of the DOTr, the Department of Public Works and Highways, the Department of Justice, the Office of the Solicitor General, and the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development.
