President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has set the proposed national budget for 2025 at P6.352 trillion - a record-high outlay that captures the administration's macroeconomic targets and spending priorities in an election year.

The proposed P6.532 spending plan for 2025, which Marcos approved during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, is at least 10% higher than the current year's P5.768 trillion budget. It represents 22% of the country's gross domestic product.

According to a Presidential Communications Office news release, the 2025 National Expenditure Plan (NEP) reflects the government's priorities, such as food security, social protection, healthcare, housing, disaster resilience, infrastructure, digital connectivity, and energization.

'Since I've seen it before on the macro level, I think the priorities in terms of our proposed appropriations, upon addressing it, weighted our priorities properly in terms of appropriations,' Marcos added.

Budget Secretary Amendah Pangandaman earlier explained that the higher NEP is due to the bigger budget allocation for local government units, which increased almost 20% to P1.03 trillion.

LGUs are set to get a bigger outlay in 2025 based on the government's 2022 revenue collection, which improved as the economy recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The DBM chief also said that 2025, being an election year, will require additional funding for the conduct of the polls and allowances for volunteers.

Education stands to get the lion's share of the proposed budget, as required by the 1987 Constitution.

Others that will get large sums are the sectors of public work, health, interior and local government, and defense.

Pangandaman said the government is eyeing to submit the proposed budget to Congress on July 29, a week after Marcos' third State of the Nation Address.

This will then be followed by legislative deliberations of the national budget before a bicameral conference submits a proposed General Appropriations Act to the president.

Last year, budget deliberations at the House and the Senate triggered a wave of criticism against Vice President Sara Duterte's use of confidential funds, and, to a lesser extent, civilian agencies' widespread use of the secret lump sum.

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