Malacañang Palace defended the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) after former President Rodrigo Duterte criticized the national budget for allegedly having discrepancies.

Duterte, in particular, pointed out the "blank entries" in several of the budget items listed in the bicameral conference report.

He noted that it is unlawful if the blank budget is filled in later, likening the action to using a blank check.

In response, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin slammed Duterte's remarks, calling it "fake news."

"Some quarters, including a former president, have maliciously peddled fake news about President Marcos having signed the GAA of 2025 with certain parts of the enactment purposely left blank to enable the administration to simply fill in the amounts like in a blank check," he said in a statement.

"The peddling of such fake news is outrightly malicious and should be condemned as criminal. No page of the 2025 National Budget was left unturned before the president signed it into law," he added.

Bersamin noted that Congress and budget department staff printed and scrutinized all 4,057 pages of the GAA and its two volumes in fine print before submitting it to the bicam and then to the Palace.

"This meticulous line-by-line scrutiny is a pre-enactment check performed by dedicated civil servants to ensure that the GAA contained no single discrepancy in the amounts being appropriated," he said.

"It is impossible for any funding items to be left blank, as alleged by misinformed and malicious sources," he added.

The Executive Secretary said the public can confirm if Duterte's statements are true or not, as a copy of the GAA is publicly available for access on the Department of Budget and Management's website.

"The true facts and the printed figures appearing in the GAA easily debunk the malicious claims of deliberate blanks being left for filling in," he said.

"Anyone who conducts the same rigorous examination of the 2025 National Budget — which the public can view on the DBM website — will come to the same conclusion: that there is no program, activity, or project at all with blank appropriations in that carefully vetted law," he added.

Bersamin further said that the former president and his cohorts should know better that the GAA could not contain blank items.

Duterte was not the only one who criticized the 2025 budget. Davao City 3rd District Representative Isidro Ungab also flagged "discrepancies" in the GAA.

President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. signed the P6.326 trillion 2025 national budget on December 30, 2024.

Marcos exercised his veto power by cutting over P194 billion worth of line items that are inconsistent with the administration's priorities.

Last week, the President has been conducting meetings with heads of government agencies to review their respective budget allocations. Some agencies have requested to restore funds for some of their projects.