Senate President Pro-Tempore Ralph Recto (Screen grab/Senate PRIB)
MANILA, Philippines — Two “pasa-buy” agencies, which have been transformed into “mega parking lots of funds,” owe the government at least P63.1 billion, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto disclosed on Tuesday.
According to Recto, the P63.1 billion represented “unutilized deposits and advance payments” of government agencies to the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) and the Philippine International Trading Corp. (PITC).
PITC is an attached agency of the Department of Trade and Industry.
The amount, Recto said, was almost evenly split by the two offices with PITC accounting for P31.54 billion and P31.56 billion for PS-DBM.
“Ang ibig sabihin niyan ay may bilyones na pambili ng mga gamit o proyekto na hindi pa nagagamit ng PS-DBM at ng PITC,” he said in a statement.
(It means that we have billions of pesos to buy equipment or projects that are not still utilized by the PS-DBM and the PITC.)
The senator lamented how the two “pasa-buy” agencies “have become last minute dumping grounds of about-to-expire allotments of agencies” despite
“years-long delays” in delivering the goods and projects they were contracted to buy.
“Hindi naman procurement expertise ang dahilan kung bakit sila napapasahan ng pondo. Ang totoong dahilan ay upang huwag abutan ng deadline at mapaso ang mga pondo ng mga ahenysa,” he pointed out.
(Procurement expertise is not the reason the funds are being transferred to them. The real reason is to avoid the deadline and expiration of funds of agencies.)
“Once an agency transfers the funds for a particular project to PITC or PS-DBM, the funds are deemed obligated. Parang committed na. And this prevents the funds from being returned to the Treasury.”
Recto said this makes the two agencies “sanctuaries which extend the life of funds about to expire.”
“In short, we are deluding ourselves with the fiction that the funds are obligated when they are not. It circumvents the provision in the national budget that appropriations must be spent within the fiscal year,” he said.
PITC, for instance, still has P355 million worth of goods and projects to be delivered out of orders made in 2016, according to the senator.
The same delays, he said, plague subcontracted procurements to PS-DBM.
“So the mystery is, if PS-DBM has been plagued with delays in the delivery of goods, if it has this huge backlog of deliverables, then why would the Department of Health contract them to buy things we urgently need to defeat the pandemic?” Recto then asked.
During a hearing in the House of Representatives, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III explained why the DOH had to tap the PS-DBM to procure COVID-19 vaccines for them.
“Nung Feb. 2020, nag-umpisa yung COVID-19, the DOH needed to augment the supply… We tried actually tried to bid for COVID-19 response items through our own bids and awards committee, unfortunately, po wala nang mga bidders due to very limited supply and yung mga local supplier ay ‘di na po nila matugunan yung kinakailangang bulto,” Duque said.
(In Feb. 2020, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the DOH needed to augment the supply…We tried actually to bid for COVID-19 response items through our own bids and awards committee. Unfortunately, there are no available bidders due to very limited supply and the local suppliers are not capable of supplying the volume we need.
“It also boggles the mind on why agencies would surrender their funds to a small agency which do not have the expertise to vet highly technical purchases,” Recto went on.
“Trains, planes and ships have been procured by DBM, which is way over their head as they are more familiar with common-use office supplies like paper and pen,” he said.