Palace hits ex-president, cohorts for fake news on 2025 budget

Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin. (PNA File Photo)

By Darryl John Esguerra, Philippine News Agency

MANILA – Malacañang on Monday slammed as “fake news” reports circulating online about the 2025 national budget, labeling the claims made by supporters of a former president as baseless and damaging.

In a statement, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin denounced the false claims that President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. signed the budget with intentionally blank sections, suggesting a “blank check” scheme for future allocations.

“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,” Bersamin said.

The 2025 budget, spanning 4,057 pages across two volumes, underwent thorough review by Congress and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) professionals, Bersamin said.

“This meticulous line-by-line scrutiny is a pre-enactment check performed by dedicated civil servants to ensure that the GAA contained no discrepancies in the amounts being appropriated,” he added.

The Palace official did not identity the former president but in a podcast video posted on the YouTube account of Davao City Mayor Sebastian Duterte, former President Rodrigo Duterte and Davao City 3rd District Rep. Isidro Ungab claimed that at least 13 pages of the budget include items with blank appropriations.

Bersamin emphasized that it is impossible for any part of the budget to be left blank.

He invited the public to review the budget available on the DBM website.

“The true facts and the printed figures appearing in the GAA [General Appropriations Act] easily debunk the malicious claims of deliberate blanks being left for filling in,” he said.

“The former president and his cohorts should know better that the GAA should not contain blank items,” Bersamin said, urging the former president’s camp to act responsibly and stop spreading falsehoods.