Issue concerning confidential funds of OVP, DepEd has been resolved — PBBM

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said that the issue regarding the confidential funds concerning the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education has been resolved as far as he is concerned.

During a recent interview with the Philippine media delegation in Tokyo, Marcos discussed the removal of the P500 million from the proposed confidential and intelligence funds requested by the OVP, along with the P150 million in confidential funds for the DepEd, both overseen by Vice President Sara Duterte.

"Well, that was the initiative of the Vice President… I'm not talking about the confidential funds and to not insist that they have such confidential fund…So, I think, as far as I'm concerned, it is a settled issue," Marcos said.

Marcos also mentioned that the proposed P5.768-trillion budget for 2024 is "very, very close" to the National Expenditures Program, which the government had previously submitted to Congress.

According to Marcos, all that needs to be done is a little work over the year to ensure that the difference between the actual money that has been allowed and the funds that the House and the Senate have appropriated by Congress is covered.

There's still a difference, the Chief Executive said, between the amount allocated in the 2024 budget and "the funds that we have collected thus far."

"There's a certain amount that we now have extra, that we now have to collect, but I'm confident in that because we're changing the system in Customs, we're changing, well, the (Bureau of Internal Revenue) has been very efficient at making the collections but we are still providing new initiatives to make business easier, and also to increase our collection," he said.