COA probes into use of DAP funds

COA chair Maria Gracia Pulido Tan. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—The Commission on Audit is now looking into the releases to members of the Senate and House of Representatives of funds from the so-called Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) that were not provided for in the 2011 or 2012 budgets of the national government.

In a  statement, COA chair Grace Pulido-Tan assured Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who had asked her to investigate the  matter, that the allocations and the projects under DAP were already being reviewed by her agency.

“In response to the letter request of Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, I am now looking into the releases under the DAP to legislators, and the projects for which their DAP allocations were spent,” Tan said.

“From the initial reports of our audit clusters, there are at least two agencies found to have received DAP allocations from legislators. The corresponding audit reports shall be released in due course,” she added.

In her letter to Tan, Santiago said the supposed government savings were used to augment new budget items which  not previously authorized by Congress.

Critics of the Aquino administration said the DAP was used to “bribe” or reward senators and congressmen who had voted to impeach and convict Chief Justice Renato Corona in June last year.

Santiago said the creation of the DAP violated  the constitutional provision that “No law shall be passed authorizing any transfer of appropriations; however, the President… may, by law, be authorized to augment any item in the general appropriations law for their respective offices from savings in other items of their respective appropriations.”

The Constitution allows fund transfers only if these are from savings, say money left over from a specific project that has been completed, Santigao said, adding that no savings are made if a project has been deferred.

She said it appeared that DAP funds were taken from supposedly slow-moving projects.  “If so, no savings were generated, and therefore the DAP is illegal,” she said.

“The first issue is that the DAP was not taken from savings.  The second issue is that the DAP was not used to augment items in the budget that were previously authorized by Congress.  The alleged savings were used to augment new budget items not previously authorized by Congress,” she added.

Santiago said that the budget department should have sought the approval of Congress, because under the Constitution it is Congress that exercises the power of the purse.