President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is expected to sign the P5.268-trillion 2023 national budget on Friday, the budget chief said Wednesday.
Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Amenah F. Pangandaman said the President will sign the General Appropriations Act (GAA) on December 16 and that the Executive is now “working” on his veto message.
Pangandaman added that the DBM is now consolidating all the numbers brought about by the amendments and changes made during the ratification of the 2023 budget by Congress last week.
She also said the President will veto about two to three items in the 2023 GAA. However, she did not disclose the amount involved or detail the items that will be vetoed by Marcos Jr.
Pangandaman said the president’s veto message will be “very friendly” given the warm relationship between the Executive and Legislative branches of the government.
“I think we will have two vetoes, two to three direct vetoes, and all the rest are just conditional and general observations,” she said.
The DBM chief said the P70 billion worth of realignments made by lawmakers in the 2023 national budget were devoted to priority areas of the current administration.
“There is the amount of roughly P70 billion that they realigned. Upon our initial analysis and checking of the numbers, most of it went to our priorities like education—funding on [state universities and colleges]—social assistance, they included an amount for the EDSA carousel [program] and for our medical sector,” Pangandaman said.