MANILA – Malacañang has condemned as “fake news” recent claims circulating online regarding the 2025 national budget, calling the accusations from supporters of a former president baseless and harmful.
In a statement, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin strongly refuted reports suggesting that President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. signed the budget with intentionally blank sections, alleging a “blank check” scheme for future budget allocations.
“The spreading of such fake news is outrightly malicious and should be condemned as criminal. Not a single page of the 2025 National Budget was left unexamined before the president signed it into law,” Bersamin asserted.
The 2025 budget, consisting of 4,057 pages in two volumes, underwent an exhaustive review by Congress and professionals from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), according to Bersamin.
“This detailed, line-by-line scrutiny is a pre-enactment check carried out by diligent civil servants to ensure that the General Appropriations Act (GAA) is free from discrepancies in the amounts being allocated,” he explained.
While Bersamin did not directly name the former president involved, a podcast video posted on Davao City Mayor Sebastian Duterte’s YouTube account featured former President Rodrigo Duterte and Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab claiming that at least 13 pages of the budget contained blank appropriations.
Bersamin emphasized that such allegations were completely unfounded, stressing that no part of the budget was left blank. He encouraged the public to examine the full budget available on the DBM’s website.
“The facts and the figures in the GAA easily disprove the malicious claims of blank spaces,” he said. “The former president and his allies should know better that the GAA cannot and should not contain blank items.”
Bersamin urged the former president’s camp to act responsibly and cease spreading falsehoods.
ia/mnm