Robredo to LGUs: Disclose expenses

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet—Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo on Tuesday said local governments would only be allowed to get loans and government financial assistance if they comply with the Department of the Interior and Local Government’s directive to disclose how they spent their budgets.

Before the end of the year, provinces, towns or cities without the DILG’s seal of good housekeeping and “a passing report card” from government auditors would not get loans from the Development Bank of the Philippines, Land Bank of the Philippines and Philippine National Bank, Robredo said.

Robredo, who led a roadshow for the DILG’s full-disclosure policy, said this guideline was set in principle in talks with the Department of Finance and heads of government banks to address local government accountability.

“Funding will go to whoever deserves it,” he said. Robredo said the Aquino administration is focusing on a “system of merit” in its campaign to reduce or stop corruption in the bureaucracy.

Housekeeping seal

The housekeeping seal, which has a P1-million cash component, has been awarded to local governments that follow Robredo’s full-disclosure program.

Local governments must also comply with government audit reports, Robredo said.

Even the management of funds for the government’s conditional cash transfer (CCT) program may soon require a housekeeping seal, Robredo said.

He said there are plans to devolve the management and monitoring of the CCT to local governments “that can be trusted” because they have good records.

Foreign fund sources, like the World Bank, have been studying the government’s rate of compliance with full disclosure because the infrastructure and aid programs these agencies subsidize may also depend on whether the beneficiary community has a good housekeeping seal, Robredo said.

But several Abra mayors said their towns were still undergoing reforms and their inability to win a good housekeeping seal should not jeopardize their access to funds.

Asked whether the Aquino administration’s poverty alleviation thrust would be affected by bank restrictions on governments with bad housekeeping records, Robredo said compliance with full disclosure was not a new requirement because the Local Government Code and the Government Procurement Reform Act of 2003 direct local governments to post their annual transactions in public places.

He said DILG would ask President Aquino to restore a budgetary item, called Assistance to Local Government Units (Algu), which the administration struck off the 2011 budget. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon