Malacañang denounced on Monday the spread of malicious and criminal disinformation by the camp of a former president regarding the 2025 national budget, calling the claims baseless and damaging.

Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin criticized the dissemination of fake news alleging that President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. signed the budget with portions intentionally left blank, implying a scheme akin to a “blank check” supposedly for future allocations.

“The peddling of such fake news is outrightly malicious and should be condemned as criminal. No page of the 2025 National Budget was left unturned before the president signed it into law,” Executive Secretary Bersamin said in a statement.

He clarified that all 4,057 pages of the two-volume budget, printed in fine detail, underwent thorough review by professionals from Congress and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).

“This meticulous line-by-line scrutiny is a pre-enactment check performed by dedicated civil servants to ensure that the GAA contained no discrepancies in the amounts being appropriated,” he said.

He also emphasized that it is impossible for any portion of the budget to have been left blank.

Executive Secretary Bersamin invited public scrutiny of the 2025 national budget, which will be accessible on the DBM website posted on January 2, 2025, to confirm its accuracy and completeness.

“The true facts and the printed figures appearing in the GAA easily debunk the malicious claims of deliberate blanks being left for filling in,” he said.

“Anyone who conducts the same rigorous examination of the 2025 National Budget — which the public can view on the DBM website — will come to the same conclusion: that there are no programs, activities, or projects with blank appropriations in that carefully vetted law,” he added.

“The former president and his cohorts should know better that the GAA should not contain blank items.”

Executive Secretary Bersamin concluded his statement by reminding the camp of the former president that the law governing the national budget makes it impossible for blank appropriations to exist, urging them to act responsibly and refrain from spreading falsehoods. | PND