Commission on Audit. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Audit (COA) has asked the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) to authorize the Philippine Southeast Asian Games Organizing Committee (Phisgoc) to submit the necessary documents on the unliquidated South East Asian Games funds.
In a COA report on PSC released on Friday, it cited that state auditors have yet to receive the fund utilization report for financial assistance to the Phisgoc.
“FAs [Financial assistance] released to PHISGOC and POC [Philippine Olympic Committee] in CY 2019 in the total amount of ₱1,815,169,762.67, ₱535,413,045.56, respectively pertinent to SEA Games events remained unliquidated as of year-end despite completion of the intended purpose, contrary to COA Circular No. 2007-001,” read the COA report.
COA added that the PSC provided additional funds to Phisgoc from January 29, 2020, to June 19, 2020 “in the total amount of ₱417,546,728.08, despite non-liquidation of previous FAs, thus, further increasing the unliquidated accounts of PHISGOC to ₱2,232,716,490.75.”
With this, COA told PSC to require the Phisgoc to submit the following:
- invoices, billings, statement of accounts, purchase orders/contracts, or other documents to establish the existence of the unpaid obligations incurred for the SEA Games to support the succeeding fund releases;
- bank statements for the funds received from the PSC from the time the account was opened until the current date; and
- remit to PSC the interests earned from all the FAs received and deposited to its bank account.
State auditors also advised the PSC management that they can only release funds to Phisgoc if the committee has evidence to prove that it has unpaid obligations.
“Moreover, if there are still expenses/obligations that need to be paid by PHISGOC, we recommended and Management agreed that fund releases should only be approved by the PSC Board of Commissioners upon presentation by PHISGOC of the proof of document to establish the existence of the unpaid obligations and that the fund to be released should only correspond to the actual amount thereof,” read the report.
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