Malacañang denied previous claims of alleged blanks and discrepancies in the bicameral conference committee report related to the enacted 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA).
In a statement on Monday, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin dismissed claims, including those from a former president, that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed the 2025 GAA with blank sections meant to be filled in later like a blank check.
"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.
"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," he added.
Furthermore, Bersamin stated that all 4,057 pages of the national budget were thoroughly reviewed by hundreds of professional staff from the House of Representatives and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).
He mentioned that the meticulous line-by-line scrutiny of the budget was a pre-enactment check conducted by dedicated civil servants to ensure that the GAA contained no discrepancies in the amounts being appropriated.
Bersamin stated that, given this process, it is impossible for any funding to be left blank, as claimed by "misinformed and malicious sources."
"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," said Bersamin.
"The former president and his cohorts should know better that the GAA could not contain blank items," he added.
On Saturday, former President Rodrigo Duterte and Davao City 3rd District Representative Isidro Ungab expressed concerns over alleged blanks and discrepancies in the bicameral conference committee report.
The lawmaker presented pages from the bicam report that contained blank spaces where amounts should be listed.
Duterte then argued that the GAA should not be regarded as valid legislation due to the alleged discrepancies.
Moreover, he cautioned of potential criminal consequences for falsification or forgery and called for those responsible to be held accountable.
On December 11, the bicameral conference committee held its final meeting, where the report was ratified.
President Marcos Jr. officially signed the GAA for Fiscal Year 2025 into law on December 30.
