December 12, 2024 | 4:45pm
MANILA, Philippines — Despite not being signed into law yet, there are already talks the 2025 national budget could be brought up to the Supreme Court (SC) should the unprogrammed funds be approved.
The bicameral conference committee inserted P373 billion in unprogrammed funds into the proposed 2025 national budget, raising the total from P158.6 billion to P531.66 billion.
This is not the first time the Congress raised the unprogrammed funds beyond what the executive branch asked for. In 2024, Congress gave the executive branch an additional P449.5 billion worth of unprogrammed funds, raising the unprogrammed funds to P731.44 billion.
Several lawmakers believe the insertion is unconstitutional, including Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III, who petitioned the matter before the SC.
“I have no choice but to raise this before the Supreme Court, maybe in a new case or, siguro… supplemental petition before the Supreme Court,” Pimentel said during a Wednesday plenary session in the Senate.
Unprogrammed funds are standby appropriations. This could mean that items falling under unprogrammed funds may not have a budget dedicated for it yet. The government must have an excess of revenue before some projects could be funded.
Pimentel said the unprogrammed funds were unconstitutional. The Constitution said the Congress could not increase what the executive branch asked for in the budget.
On top of the petition questioning the unprogrammed funds, Pimentel has also raised to the SC the controversial provision in the 2024 budget that allowed the Department of Finance to order Philhealth’s idle funds back into the national treasury.
Pimentel asked Sen. Grace Poe, the budget sponsor in the Senate, whether the increase in unprogrammed funds meant that money was moved from line items to unprogrammed funds.
Poe admitted that some items were moved but did not disclose which ones.
Poe also acknowledged that, ideally, there should be no unprogrammed funds at all.
“We have limited resources but there are so many programs that we would like to fund but unfortunately we don’t have the immediate amount on hand so there are still certain projects that will be categorized under the unfunded, unprogrammed appropriations,” Poe said.
“Ideally there should be none, and I would concede that,” she added.
Poe also said the president would have the power to reallocate funding for selected programs.
Congress has gained a habit of inserting a higher amount of unprogrammed funds compared to what the executive branch asked for.
In 2023, Congress raised the administration’s unprogrammed funds from P588.16 billion to P807.16 billion. This is more than ten times the amount of unprogrammed funds compared to 2016, which was P67 billion.
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