DAVAO CITY – Davao City third district Rep. Isidro Ungab maintained on Monday, Jan. 20, that the observed discrepancies in the bicameral conference committee report on the 2025 national budget are not fake news and emphasized the blank items in the annual expenditure.
A copy of the report was uploaded to Ungab’s Facebook account. It highlighted its signed status and affirmed the absence of blank items in the finalized 2025 National Budget or General Appropriations Act (GAA) in response to President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.’s recent statement.
“The Bicam Report is reconciling the conflicting Lower House and Senate versions. It is the final basis of the figures reflected in the GAA. If there are blank items in the Bicam Report, how can the GAA be completed despite the blank items? Why did the members sign it?” Ungab said.
Marcos denied the accusations and stated that Ungab and former President Rodrigo Duterte lied. Executive Secretary Lucas P. Bersamin also dismissed the allegations, describing them as “outrightly malicious.” He said such misinformation should be “denounced as a criminal act.”
Duterte’s former Chief Presidential Legal Counsel, Salvador Panelo, said in a statement that the former Chief Executive was merely expressing a “legal opinion” based on Ungab’s assertion that the 2025 GAA was signed despite alleged irregularities and did not point out anyone on it.
Panelo said the elder Duterte did not specifically claim there were blank items or items without specific programs in the national budget. He urged the media to also critically examine the GAA, despite Malacañang’s denial of the allegations raised by Ungab and Duterte.
In the “Basta Dabawenyo” podcast aired on Saturday, Jan. 18, Ungab bared that parts of the budget connected to the Department of Agriculture and unprogrammed appropriation contained numerous missing figures, with some amounts totaling billions of pesos.
The lawmaker, expressing his concern on the matter, said in his 15 years in Congress, including his time as a chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, he had never encountered a bicam report with missing details.
Following Ungab’s claims, Duterte argued that if the 2025 GAA contains incomplete information, it could not be considered valid legislation. He said there must be something wrong if there were irregularities in the report.
“I would say that if any blanks were made through, it is not valid legislation. If the law contains blank or incomplete items, whether filled in before or after Congress, a fragmented or incomplete budget cannot be considered valid for implementation,” Duterte said.
The report was ratified on Dec. 11, 2024, and passed by both chambers of Congress. However, Duterte criticized the incomplete report, emphasizing that leaving blanks in a financial document is unacceptable.