The Senate Committee on Finance retained the P733-million budget for the Office of the Vice President (OVP) as proposed by the House of Representatives in its version of the P6.35-trillion General Appropriations Bill (GAB) for 2025.
This is according to committee chairperson Sen. Grace Poe, who cited the OVP’s failure to submit the necessary documents to clarify budget concerns.
“We reached out several times to the Office of the Vice President requesting them to submit documents to clarify issues regarding their budget but they have not submitted as of today. So, we decided to retain the GAB amount pending submission and review of these documents,” Poe said.
“While we cannot account for movements in the figures on an apples-to-apples basis, we can say that we retained the original budget for the relevant item in DSWD (Department of Social Welfare and Development) while we increased further the item under the DOH (Department of Health) budget,” she added.
The House, which approved the GAB on third and final reading in September, reduced the OVP’s proposed P2-billion outlay as proposed in the National Expenditure Program (NEP) by P1.29 billion.
The House Committee on Appropriations previously recommended slashing the proposed OVP budget after Vice President Sara Duterte refused to answer lawmakers regarding how her office utilized its funds, including confidential funds.
