MANILA, Philippines — President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos said that former chief executive Rodrigo Duterte is lying following claims that some portions of the 2025 national budget were intentionally left blank.

“He’s lying. He’s a President. He knows that you cannot pass a GAA (General Appropriations Act) with a blank,” Marcos said in a chance interview on Monday.

Earlier in the day, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin has belied claims made by Duterte and Davao City 3rd District Representative  that the 2025 GAA was purposely left blank like a blank check to allegedly administer theft.

“Sa kasaysayan ng buong Pilipinas, hindi pinapayagan na magkaroon ng item ang GAA na hindi nakalagay kung ano ‘yung project, at tsaka ano ‘yung gastos, ano ‘yung pondo. So, it’s a lie,”  he said.

“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,” Bersamin said in a separate statement. 

Some parts of the alleged blank GAA surfaced on social media following the interview and went viral overnight, leaving the public enraged. 

Among the details that went viral were some billions unaccounted for in allocations for the National Irrigation Administration and the Philippine Coconut Authority.

According to Malacañang, no page of the 2025 GAA was left unturned before Marcos signed it into law on December 30, 2024. 

“The peddling of such fake news is outrightly malicious and should be condemned as criminal,” Bersamin said. 

The official likewise said that the 2025 national budget, consisting of 4,057 pages of the two volumes, was thoroughly reviewed by hundreds of professional staff from Congress and the Department of Budget and Management. 

According to Duterte and Ungab, there were blank portions in the 2025 national budget which made the GAA  “invalid.” 

“I noticed that there were many blanks, and these amounts reach billions of pesos,” said Ungab in an interview

“In the Bicam report, the budget for the agricultural and fisheries modernization program was listed at P146,335,937,000. However, in the General Appropriations Act (GAA), it was reduced to P126,798,221,000. This discrepancy is alarming,” said Ungab.