What are unprogrammed funds in the nat'l budget?

The term unprogrammed appropriations has again hit the headlines after President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. signed the law containing the national budget for fiscal year 2025.

In signing the 2025 General Appropriations Act, Marcos vetoed over P195 billion worth of allocations, including P168 billion worth of unprogrammed appropriations.

So what are unprogrammed appropriations?

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) defines unprogrammed appropriations as those that provide standby authority to incur additional agency obligations for priority programs or projects when revenue collection exceeds targets, and when additional grants or foreign funds are generated while appropriations with definite/identified funding as of the time the budget is prepared.

In simple terms, unprogrammed appropriations are akin to planned household purchases that may only proceed if extra money is available, either from additional income, like bonuses or from loans.

While the president reduced the unprogrammed appropriations by P168 billion under the 2025 GAA, hundreds of billions worth of projects still have standby spending authority.

Under the national budget bill ratified by Congress, the budget for unprogrammed appropriations was set at P531.665 billion.

This means, the 2025 GAA still has around P363.665 billion for unprogrammed appropriations.

This was pointed out by Senate Minority Leader Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III while he welcomed the president's decision to veto some items in the 2025 GAA.

"Mabuti binawasan ng Pangulo ang total amount of the approved budget. However, I was hoping for... even greater reduction in the unprogrammed appropriations in order to bring it back to the level as proposed in the National Expenditure Program by the President," the minority leader said.

During the plenary deliberations on the 2025 national budget bill in the Senate last November, Senate finance committee chairperson Sen. Grace Poe—who was speaking in behalf of the economic managers—said that the Executive Department has set lower funds for unprogrammed appropriations at P158.7 billion under the proposed 2025 national budget due to low excess revenue collection expected for next year.

In December last year, Pimentel argued that the law on the 2024 national budget was unconstitutional due to the P450-billion increase in unprogrammed funds introduced by Congress which pushed the total amount of the budget this year over the P5.768 trillion national budget as originally proposed by the Executive Department.

The Executive Department originally proposed P281.9 billion unprogrammed appropriations for 2024 under the National Expenditures Program (NEP) but it rose to P731.4 billion under the version of the spending plan passed and ratified by Congress.

In January, lawmakers from the House of Representatives brought the matter to the Supreme Court and urged the high tribunal to nullify the excess in unprogrammed appropriations embedded in the 2024 GAA. —NB, GMA Integrated News