NIA responds to COA report, says 257 contract packages now completed
MANILA, Philippines — The National Irrigation Administration (NIA) on Monday reported that 257 contract packages have been completed, in response to the Commission on Audit’s (COA) report flagging P20-billion worth of delayed projects.
COA’s audit report of NIA for 2018 released in August showed that 299 irrigation contracts worth P20 billion were delayed.
In a statement, NIA corrected the figures and said the 299 projects were actually 292 contract packages representing 134 projects.
NIA reported that 257 out of the 292 contract packages have been completed as of November 2019.
“As an update on the status, as of November 15, 2019, 257 contract packages were completed, 11 ongoing, 1 suspended, 5 mutually terminated, and 11 blacklisted,” the NIA said.
Some of the agency’s big ticket projects like the Balog-Balog Multipurpose Project will take three to five years to complete, NIA pointed out.
“It is informed that there are multi-year big ticket projects included in the report. Please take note that these kinds of projects cannot be completed in a year’s time but rather 3 to 5 years, at most,” NIA said.
“Example of this is the Balog-Balog Multipurpose Project (BBMP). The BBMP is one of the projects started by then-President Cory Aquino but which did not gain ground due to reasons beyond NIA’s control,” it added.
NIA Administrator Ricardo Visaya assured the public, most especially the beneficiaries of the said projects, that the agency “will fast track completion of the aforesaid contract packages, however with the exception of big multi-year projects as well as those terminated/blacklisted since it will undergo the same procurement process.”
