THE administration of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. followed the proper process when it tackled the 2024 General Appropriations Act.

This was assured by Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Amenah Pangandaman

“Ang ginagawa po namin ‘pag nagpapasa, tulad po ngayon, ang pinasa natin ay National Expenditure Program, of course ‘pag GAA, mayroon po tayong budget process and we always respect po ‘yung wisdom ng Kongreso kung mayroon po silang adjustments na gagawin sa budget,” Pangandaman explained.

Pangandaman made the remarks in a media interview when asked to react to allegations of Vice President Sara Duterte that the 2024 General Appropriations Act was mishandled.

Nevertheless, Pangandaman noted that the budget allocation for the Department of Education (DepEd) has increased from its National Expenditures Program of PhP711 billion to PhP715 billion in the 2024 GAA.

“Ang masasabi ko lang po ang PhP700 billion it was quite a huge increase from previous level niya noong 2023. Because it was then kung kailan po ginawa at saka ni-launch ng ating Bise Presidente ‘yung kanilang Matatag Program,” Pangandaman said.

The MATATAG Agenda was launched as the new direction of DepEd towards improving the quality of basic education in the country, according to a DepEd memorandum issued last year.

Meanwhile, the Budget Secretary also said the budgeting process under the General Appropriations Act is efficient and timely.

Pangandaman said DBM has started a couple of reforms in its operation.

“So, it’s basically ensuring that the budget we provide in our General Appropriations Act is being used like every centavo of it is being used in the most efficient and quick manner,” Pangandaman said.

“So, there are a couple of budget reforms that we are doing in the Department of Budget and Management, we started them already,” she added.

To make the projects immediately felt and appreciated by the public, Pangandaman said DBM is resorting to cash-based budgeting, the process of providing budgets to projects that should be “implementation-ready.”

“So, first, we have been implementing the cash-based budgeting – meaning, we only provide budget to those that are like what I said a while ago implementation ready – iyong kaya mo lang matapos sa isang taon,” she said.

“Kasi, kung kaya mo iyang tapusin nang tatlong taon, ba-budget-an lang namin iyong isang taon lang and then we will use the remaining budget for other projects that can also be used by other departments na kaya nilang matapos, because we want the projects to be felt by the Filipino people immediately – iyan po,” she added.

As for the second reform, Pangandaman said a public financial management guided by a roadmap will be issued and presented to President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.

Such roadmap will basically use digitalization where transactions of national government submitted manually by different agencies will be digitalized, she added.

“Second is the public financial management. We have a roadmap that will be issued soon. We will present it to the President. Basically, we will use digitalization,” she said.

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