MANILA, Philippines – The administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is seeking a national budget of P6.352 trillion for 2025.

A press release from the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) said Marcos approved the Department of Budget and Management’s (DBM) Fiscal Year 2025 National Expenditure Program (NEP) during a Cabinet meeting in Malacañang on Tuesday, July 2.

The request is 10.1% higher than the current year’s P5.768 trillion national budget.

According to a Malacañang press release, the sector that gets the lion’s share of the budget proposal is education, in accordance with the 1987 Constitution.

Also top priorities of the government are the sectors of public works, health, interior and local government, and defense, the PCO added.

Based on a DBM briefer, the administration also wants to prioritize infrastructure development, human capital development, food security, enterprise development, research and development, digital transformation of the government, climate-smart and disaster-resilient development, and a comprehensive devolution strategy for 2025.

Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman previously said that the executive branch targets to submit the proposed budget to Congress on July 29, a week after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s third State of the Nation Address (SONA).

Congress is tasked to scrutinize the proposed national budget, going through the House first before the Senate.

Once the budget bill hurdles both chambers, the president signs it into law, called the General Appropriations Act (GAA) for the fiscal year.

It is usually during the budget season in Congress that government agencies get evaluated on how they utilized their current budget, and what they want to achieve with their funding request for the succeeding year.

Last year’s budget deliberations centered on the swift disbursement of Vice President Sara Duterte’s confidential funds in 2022. The controversy resulted in the House’s denial of her request for confidential funds for 2024. – Rappler.com