By Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza, Reporter

PHILIPPINE President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. said on Thursday he seeks to remold the proposed 2025 national budget to the “same shape” submitted by the Executive branch in July.

He made the statement after meeting his economic managers on Wednesday afternoon to review the Congress-approved budget for next year.

“Well, we had to have a look because a lot were changed from the budget request of the different departments and we have to put it back in the same shape that we had first requested,” he told reports in mixed English and Filipino on the sidelines of an event in Pasay City.

The Presidential Palace on Wednesday announced the postponement of the budget signing set for Dec. 20, amid backlash that has forced the President to push for the restoration of cuts from the Department of Education’s (DepEd) budget.

Mr. Marcos earlier justified the bicameral conference committee’s (bicam) move to remove the state subsidy for the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), arguing it has enough reserves.

The President, speaking to reporters on Thursday, said he’s “unfortunately” only “left now with the veto power.”

“Now it’s up to us on how we regain control of the spending program,” he said.

Executive Secretary Lucas P. Bersamin on Wednesday said while the new date for the budget signing remains unclear, “we can now confirm that certain items and provisions of the national budget will be vetoed.”

“We are going through item by item, line by line, to see what [the] priority is and what is not. And that is what we will come up with,” Mr. Marcos said.

“But I want to be very, very sure that the budget for 2025 is directed at the important projects that we have prioritized, number one. And secondly, that there [are] stronger safeguards on spending for the different projects,” he added.

DepEd, in particular, was denied its proposed P10-billion funding for its computerization program for 2025 due to its failure to spend previous budgets for the similar program as early as 2022.

It reported an obligation rate of 41.9% as of August, ranking 11^th among government agencies in terms of budget utilization. Still, the rate is higher than that of the House of Representatives (HoR), which had the lowest obligation rate of 8.8% but has nonetheless, received a P16.35-billion increase in the bicam version.

The President said they may also “assess” items included in the budget via “insertion.”

“We are starting to see some project proposals that do not have the appropriate program of work, [no] appropriate documentation, and it’s not clear where the money will go,” he said. “So we will clarify that.”

The Department of Public Works and Highways’ (DPWH) allocation in the Congress-approved budget rose by P288 billion to P1.1-trillion funding. And as the agency responsible for most of the government’s flagship infrastructure projects became a net gainer, while agencies responsible for key social services faced massive cuts.

In the bicam-version of the spending plan, the budget of the Department of Social Welfare and Development declined by P95 billion to P217.3-billion funding, while the Health department’s budget fell by P25.7 billion to P247 billion.

Public finance expert Zyza Nadine M. Suzara, however, said line-item vetoes will not restore budget cuts, raising the need to reconvene the bicam to “reshape” the budget.

“It seems like the President does know his constitutional mandate. The ratified version of the 2025 budget can only be reshaped by reconvening the Bicam and restoring the budget for what the country truly needs,” Ms. Suzara said in an X message.

“That means the President has to call Congress to a special session to ‘reshape the budget.’ Imposing line-item veto will not necessarily restore the funds that agencies lost. Taxpayers deserve more than the crumbs thrown to us by the Bicam.”

She added a line-item veto would be “useless” as it cannot “significantly change the budget,” noting the move was just a “way to minimize the backlash.”

“Without a line item in the budget for the PhilHealth subsidy, the funds cannot be restored even assuming that the President vetoes the astronomical increases in the DPWH, AKAP (Ayuda sa Kapos ang Kita Program) and HoR budgets,” she explained.

Mr. Marcos said the country does not have a considerable amount of savings, “so we need to be careful about where we spend it.”

The P6.352-trillion national budget is equivalent to 22.1% of the country’s gross domestic product, and 10.1% higher than the P5.768-trillion budget this year.

Mr. Marcos said he hopes to sign the spending plan for 2025 by the year end. If the budget is not approved within the year, the Philippine government will operate under the 2024 Generation Appropriations Act.

PRESIDENT Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. on Thursday said the Department of Justice (DoJ) needs to review a recommendation by a House panel to file charges of crimes against humanity against former President Rodrigo R. Duterte and his allies for rights violations in the previous administration’s war on drugs.

Mr. Marcos said he was “aware” of the House Quad Committee’s recommendations, and that it is the DoJ that will have to determine the next steps.

“The DoJ has to make that assessment,” he told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Pasay City. 

“The DoJ will look at it and see if there are — if it is time to file cases, what cases to file, how to produce the evidence, and we will need to actually build the case up,” he added.

He said the DoJ needs to assess the committee’s recommendation thoroughly and see if it is going in the right direction.

The recommendations followed the conclusion of the committee’s investigation into deaths linked to Mr. Duterte’s anti-drug campaign and crimes related to Philippine offshore gaming operations.

The Justice department had earlier created a task force to investigate alleged extrajudicial killings in Mr. Duterte’s drug war.

The government estimates that at least 6,117 people were killed in Mr. Duterte’s drug war between July 1, 2016, and May 31, 2022, but human rights groups say the death toll could be as high as 30,000.

The International Criminal Court’s probe of Mr. Duterte’s drug war covers crimes committed in Davao City from November 2011 to June 2016 when Mr. Duterte sat as its mayor, as well as cases during his presidency up until March 16, 2019, the day before the Philippines officially withdrew from the court’s Rome Statute.

“When they do an oversight hearing, they have findings that they will forward to the DoJ with their own recommendations as to how to handle the findings in the hearings,” Mr. Marcos said in mixed English and Filipino.

In recommending the filing of charges against Mr. Duterte and others, the committee cited Republic Act 9851, known as the Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide, and Other Crimes Against Humanity.

Quad Committee chair and Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace S. Barbers noted in the report that Mr. Duterte himself admitted key elements of his administration’s drug war, including the so-called Davao Death Squad.

The lawmaker also cited the Davao template of rewarding police officers involved in extrajudicial deaths.

Also named in the report were Christopher Lawrence Go, Mr. Duterte’s former aide who is now a senator, and then-police chief and now senator Ronald Dela Rosa. — Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza