Unprogrammed funds on the rise: Questions that hound the 2024 budget

MANILA, Philippines — It is budget season once again and legislators are tasked with assessing the proposed projects of government agencies and seeing if they can do right by the public’s taxes. 

However, the 2024 General Appropriations Act (the version of the budget that is approved by Congress and passed into law) continues to confound—and even anger—some lawmakers. 

During the budget deliberations of some agencies, lawmakers were surprised that portions of their budget went to unprogrammed funds. 

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) defined unprogrammed funds “provide standby authority to incur additional agency obligations for priority programs or projects when revenue collection exceed targets, and when additional grants or foreign funds are generated.”

In simpler terms, these are items in the budget which do not have money allocated for it yet. Should the government generate the money, or should there be new sources for it, then it will get reallocated to the project. 

Philstar.com compiled and contrasted the proposed unprogrammed funds since 2016, under the term of former president Rodrigo Duterte up to the latest National Expenditure Program (NEP) under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The NEP is the executive branch’s proposed budget for the year. 

Under Duterte, the proposed unprogrammed funds never exceeded P260 billion. In 2017, the unprogrammed funds in both Duterte’s NEP and GAA was P67,500,000,000. For the most part, Congress approved Duterte’s unprogrammed funds without changing it, not until the 2022 budget—the one his predecessor would inherit.  

Duterte’s DBM proposed P151,639,197,000 in unprogrammed funds, but Congress gave his administration P251,639,197,000.   

This trend of Congress surpassing the executive branch’s proposed unprogrammed funds continued well into Marcos’ term. 

The 2023 budget (the first one fully created under Marcos’ admin) proposed P588,162,480,000 in unprogrammed funds. Congress gave the executive branch P807,162,480,000. 

For the 2024 budget, Congress added P449.5 billion of unprogrammed funds to the executive branch’s request of P281,908,056,000, totaling to a whopping P731,448,566,000. 

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