MANILAhoya88, Philippines — President Marcos yesterday vowed to restore the multibillion-peso allocation slashed from the budget of the Department of Education (DepEd), saying the move to reduce the agency’s proposed outlay for next year goes against his policy direction.
The bicameral conference committee has reduced DepEd’s proposed budget by P12 billion, drawing flak from critics who stressed that the decision reflected “anti-education” policies and would affect students trying to catch up with the digital age.
Education Secretary Sonny Angara said the budget cut was a deviation from the lawmakers’ usual practice of raising the President’s proposed outlay for education.
Speaking to Palace reporters, Marcos said the administration is searching for ways to fix the budget cut, noting that the original proposal was just enough to fund existing measures.
“On the subject of the DepEd, we are still looking into it. I think it is contrary to all our policy directions when we talk about the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) development of our educational sector and then the continuing development,” the President said.
“The P10 billion that was reduced comes from the computerization item. So we’re working on it to make sure that we will restore it. I do not want to line item veto anything because that just gets in the way. So we’re still talking about it and trying to find a way,” he added.
Angara, meanwhile, said he is confident that the P10 billion lawmakers slashed from DepEd’s proposed 2025 budget would be supplemented with allocation from other fund sources.
Angara said Marcos had already instructed him to coordinate with other national agencies, including the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), to seek recourse over DepEd’s slashed funding.
“He instructed me to coordinate with other Cabinet secretaries, especially Secretary (Amenah) Pangandaman of DBM over how we can fill the funding DepEd lost,” Angara told reporters.
Angara said DepEd could explore ways to supplement its 2025 budget, including drawing from savings.
Sleepless nightThe DepEd chief said Marcos was keen on pouring extra funding into DepEd to fill the deficit.
“He called me the other day telling me he couldn’t sleep because (the cuts) were contradictory to his vision for a modern education system and to give our youth – especially those who have not been exposed to computers their entire lives – a chance to wield technology,” Angara said.
“Usually, when the President wants something, he can make it happen,” he added.
The bicameral conference committee last week reduced to P737 billion, from P748.65 billion, the DepEd’s 2025 funding allocation in the reconciled version of the General Appropriations Bill.
Of the amount cut, P10 billion would be slashed from the DepEd’s computerization program, which aims to provide public schools with gadgets, equipment, software and training for teachers and students.
Angara said filling the budget was important to ensure that DepEd would not have backlogs in its target of providing all public schools with computer packages before Marcos ends his term in 2028.
“Time will come that the world will be divided into two – those who can use computers and those who don’t know how. Those who don’t know how will be at a disadvantage,” he added.
Rep. Rodge Gutierrez of 1-Rider Party-list has defended the House of Representatives’ decision to remove P10 billion from DepEd’s computerization budget, citing what he called the “problems and scandals” left behind by its former chief, Vice President Sara Duterte. According to Gutierrez, the move is not about depriving education, but “ensuring proper fund use and accountability.”
Even if the House and the Senate have already ratified the proposed P6.352-trillion spending bill for 2025, Marcos said he is optimistic that the DepEd budget cut could still be addressed.
“I think we’ll still be able to do it, to be able to do something. Maybe this is the first thing, my response is not yet complete, but I will tell you, we are working on it. It is really necessary,” the Chief Executive said.
“The original request of P12 billion... is only sufficient to maintain what we’re already doing when in fact we have to do more. So we have to figure that out,” he added.
Zero subsidy backedWhile Marcos is against the slashing of the DepEd budget, he is supportive of the move to give the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) zero subsidy because of its multibillion-peso reserve funds.
According to Marcos, the state-run health insurer has a P500-billion reserve, but the cost of providing its services in a year is just less than P100 billion.
“I know people are worried, why did we reduce it? The truth is, the Department of Finance took back some of its (PhilHealth) reserves because they were not used for years. In other words, PhilHealth has sufficient budget to do all the things (it wants) to do,” he added.
Marcos said the treatments being shouldered by PhilHealth have expanded in the last two years but the health insurer is still capable of funding them.
“And the reason why we do not want to subsidize, because the subsidy will just remain in the bank account of PhilHealth, it won’t be used. We can use that for several other purposes, so that’s a simple explanation there. They have sufficient funds to carry on,” he said.
“The problem of PhilHealth is not about the giving of services or the giving of insurance cover. That’s not the problem... The problem is, if you look at the reports that are happening, because PhilHealth has several new services, because it gives a lot of new payments, the system becomes congested.”
He cited the need to digitize the procedures of PhilHealth to hasten the processing of claims.
“The problem is the processing capacity. One of the biggest priorities of PhilHealth was to continue to provide health services insurance... You have to be digitized,” he added.
On criticisms that the budget for public works is bloated, Marcos vowed to conduct a review to determine which projects are necessary. “We’ll have to look into the details of that,” the President said.
“We look into the insertion in the public works and see which ones are absolutely necessary, and maybe the others, let us check, they may be critical,” he added.
Marcos said public works will remain as one of the top recipients of the budget because of the importance of infrastructure like flood control projects. But he stressed the government would ensure that debt ratios remain manageable.
Signed before ChristmasWhile various issues surround the 2025 budget, Marcos said it is still expected to be signed into law before Christmas. The Presidential Communications Office previously said the enactment of the budget was tentatively slated for Dec. 20.
“Yes. Pipilitin ko talaga (I will really make sure) that we will finish it by then,” he said.
Pressed if he would exercise his power to veto some line items, Marcos said: “We’re not yet there, we’re not yet at that point. The process is still ongoing, we’re still finalizing because what came out of the bicam were just the totals, so the details are not yet clear.”
gsb slotFor Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri, Marcos can still remedy the problematic items in the budget by using his veto power.
“So before it is submitted to Malacañang, the President can always address Congress, the congressional leaders, both the Senate President and the Speaker, and say he wants a few things further amended in the bicam report,” Zubiri said.
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III said one of the constitutional issues in the budget is the high allocation for infrastructure at the expense of education.
“So the constitutional issue No. 1 is that infrastructure projects getting more budget priorities than education when under our Constitution, education shall enjoy the highest budgetary priority,” Pimentel said. “About a trillion-peso budget was allocated for infrastructure and only around P900 billion is the budget for the education institutions of the country.”
On October 18, Duterte engaged in a two-hour media discussion where she made various comments about the president. She shared how she imagined cutting off Marcos’ head while addressing allegations related to fund misuse in the Department of Education and the Office of the Vice President (OVP).
The following LGUs announced suspension of face-to-face classes:
Sen. Imee Marcos, for her part, said “we are all groping in the dark” as some provisions in the budget were unexplained. “No details or explanations, no concrete numbers. The only thing I have is some DSWD data that is really desecrated, especially this PhilHealth.”
The Makabayan bloc in the House of Representatives is calling for the immediate reconvening of the bicameral conference committee to restore cuts in social services budget and the removal of “pork barrel.”
“We, the Makabayan Bloc in Congress, strongly denounce the recently approved bicameral conference committee report on the 2025 national budget as a blatant replay of fiscal mismanagement and political patronage,” the Makabayan bloc said in a statement.
“The public was kept in the dark about the specific amendments, their justifications and their impacts on urgent social services. Once again, the bicam has proven itself to be an unaccountable ‘third chamber’ of Congress, questionably wielding power to sabotage the priorities of the peoplehoya88,” the progressive coalition said. — Cecille Suerte Felipe, Jose Rodel Clapano