Palace: BBM thoroughly reviewing 2025 budget

Provisions must conform with Constitution

- By ALEXIS ROMERO

President Marcos is moving to ensure that the 2025 budget will be compliant with the Constitution and has been "most prudent" in allocating resources, Malacañang said yesterday, following calls to scrap the items in the spending bill that may not withstand legal scrutiny.

Concerns have been raised over "unconstitutional" provisions in the P6.352-trillion budget bill for next year, including the inserted hefty increase in the funding for public works that made it bigger than that for education, the sector that should be given the highest budgetary priority under the Constitution.

Among those who assailed the spending bill passed by Congress was Marcos' eldest sister Sen. Imee Marcos, who had pointed out that the P1.113-trillion public works budget is higher than the overall P925 billion allocation for basic, higher and technical vocation education.