Palace admits it’s not out of the woods yet on DAP issue

FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Malacañang admitted Saturday its work clarifying the Disbursement Acceleration Program was not done yet  after opposition Sen. Nancy Binay said that Budget Secretary Butch Abad still had a lot of explaining to do following Thursday’s Senate hearing.

“No one is thinking that we’re out of the woods or that we’re off the hook. In fact, the Department of Budget and Management  is preparing the list that Senator Binay was asking for regarding the regular savings,” deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said over government radio DZRB.

On Friday, Binay said in a statement that Abad was “not yet off the hook” as he still had to account for at least P90 billion of the P237 billion in pooled savings used for the DAP.

Binay said it “appeared there was another list of projects” which the DBM funded from the regular savings after it was revealed at the hearing conducted by the Senate Finance Committee that P4.1 billion was given to the Commission on Elections for the purchase of precinct count optical scan machines and P5 million was given to the Commission on Audit to buy vehicles.

Binay took note that while the government pooled P237 billion since 2010, P167 billion was supposed to have gone to projects with an objective of accelerating economic growth.

However, Binay pointed out, only P144.3 billion was released under DAP.

“Someone should be made accountable. Remember that this is the people’s money that we are talking about and there is still P90 billion missing in the government’s ‘savings.’ Secretary Abad owes the Filipino people an explanation on where these funds went,” Binay said.