President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. wants government agencies to reexamine the administration’s programs contained in the National Expenditure Program (NEP) but were defunded by Congress.

The President wanted government agencies to focus particularly on those critical to the socioeconomic program.

“We have to reexamine so that the programs that we wanted – that we put in the NEP — can somehow be restored,” he said during the 18th Cabinet Meeting in Malacañang on Tuesday.

“For the rest of the departments, I need you to give me the priorities – the things that we prioritized in the NEP that were removed in terms of budgeting, in terms of appropriations,” the President added.

“So, what are those? In each department, what are those that are absolutely critical to the socioeconomic program as we delivered to the Congress? Paano natin ibabalik kasi critical ‘yung mga program na nawala,” he said.

According to the President, he wanted to hear from the other departments about what happened to their budgets specifically for the critical projects.

The President said he is willing to sit down with each department to ensure the government’s actual expenditure program will resemble the NEP.

Many things have to be fixed, the President said, stressing for instance the PhP12-billion decrease in the budget for the maintenance of roads, PhP500-million reduction in the funding for routine maintenance of bridges and the PhP21-billion budget cut for feasibility studies.

President Marcos signed into law last December 30 the PhP6.326-trillion General appropriations Act (GAA) for 2025.

The President, however, directly vetoed some provisions not responsive to the peoples’ needs, and pursued conditional implementation on certain items to ensure prudent utilization of public funds.

The 2025 expenditure program is 9.7 percent higher than the FY 2024 budget of PhP5.768 trillion and 22.0 percent of the projected FY 2025 gross domestic product (GDP). | PND