DBM: P7.2T 2027 budget cut from over P11T proposals

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) on Thursday said it received more than P11 trillion in agency proposals when it crafted the P7.2-trillion National Expenditure Program (NEP) for 2027.

At the Senate committee on finance hearing for the 2027 national budget, Budget Secretary Kim Robert de Leon said the DBM trimmed over P3 trillion worth of budget proposals submitted by various agencies during the budget call process for the 2027 NEP.

“This means P3 trillion worth of proposals were not considered for the NEP for various reasons,” de Leon said.

The Budget chief explained that rejected budget requests were “not fully supported by implementation readiness,” noting that these proposals were “not necessarily supported by detailed feasibility studies, engineering plans.”

Early this month, President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. submitted the proposed P7.2-trillion national budget for 2027 to the 20th Congress, which came from about P11.690-trillion worth of funding proposals submitted by government agencies.

De Leon said that the DBM also cut the government’s proposed expenditure for operations for 2027 “because we are looking at optimizing the use of these resources coupled with digitization, process streamlining, removing redundancies in the bureaucracy.” —LDF, GMA News