Palace defends release of DAP fund

MANILA, Philippines—“This administration does not and will not use public funds entrusted to us by the Filipino people to bribe or coerce any individual or group for any given purpose.”

Budget Secretary Florencio Abad issued this statement on Tuesday amid a spate of criticism that a little-known facility, known as the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), had been used to bribe senators to convict Chief Justice Renato Corona in May last year.

“When President Aquino’s term began in 2010, we repeatedly emphasized our commitment to ‘matuwid na daan’ in our campaign to improve governance and ensure that public funds are spent well. We have not strayed from that path, and we will continue our commitment of reforming the bureaucracy so it truly serves the citizens,” Abad said.

“Designed and implemented as a spending acceleration mechanism, the DAP was launched by the Aquino administration in October 2011 to support fast-moving projects that would help the government catch up with its expenditure targets,” said Abad, who is attending a governance conference in Burma (Myanmar).

The statement issued by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) said the projects funded by DAP included tourism infrastructure, electrification of certain communities and projects of the National Housing Authority. It was also used to settle unpaid premiums of employees of the Department of Education owed to the Government Service Insurance System.

“The Aquino administration has consistently and faithfully used DAP according to its design, which is to maximize the utilization of national government savings and further enhance the country’s economic expansion,” Abad said.

The budget department said that as of Oct. 1, 2013, the total amount released for DAP was P137.3 billion. The amount includes the P82.5 billion released in 2011 and the P54.8 billion released last year

About 91 percent of funds released for DAP in 2011 and 2012 were disbursed to various government agencies and local government units, the DBM said.

Only 9 percent of total DAP releases for the same period went to projects identified by legislators, it added.

At a briefing in the Palace, deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte tried to downplay the furor generated by an admission by Abad himself on Saturday that P1.107 billion of pork barrel funds were released to senators from August 2012 to February 2013.

Aquino approved releases

The releases were made following the conviction of Corona for culpable violation of the Constitution and betrayal of public trust by failing to include his dollar accounts in his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth.

Valte said that President Aquino approved the additional P50-million fund releases to senators after the ouster of Corona. “The President was aware and gave his approval for the DAP,” she said.

The Palace maintained that DAP was a program—based on constitutional provisions and the administrative code—created in 2011 to “bolster economy and infrastructure development” by helping to ramp up spending in certain sectors of the economy.

But a press release issued on Jan. 9, 2012, by the DBM identified the “P” in DAP as “Plan,” not “program” as is being claimed by the Palace this time.

Per Valte’s admission, the DAP was not created by any executive order but was a program instituted in 2011, when the Aquino administration had sluggish disbursements.

It took her over an hour to explain that the DAP was, in effect, a pool of monies from savings or unspent funds—unreleased appropriations, realignment and unprogrammed funds—by way of responding to senators’ contention that the DAP was a sole invention of the DBM which did not pass through the scrutiny of Congress during budget deliberations.