No underspending, just ‘delayed spending,’ says Abad

Answering criticism that the previous administration failed to spend some P1 trillion allotted  for various projects, former Budget chief Florencio B. Abad on Wednesday reasoned that this was not a case of underspending but rather of  “delayed spending.”

He also said that contrary to Budget Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno’s estimate, the undisbursed amount would not reach P1 trillion.

Diokno told members of the House appropriations committee last Monday that the Aquino administration failed to spend about P1 trillion in the past six years and that he arrived at this figure by comparing the authorized appropriations with actual expenditures during the years 2011 until 2016.

The funds unspent reflected lost opportunities that were “huge in terms of jobs lost and economic opportunities if the infrastructure projects were started and completed,” Diokno  had added.

Countered Abad: “Diokno is assuming that the shortfalls become permanent shortfalls. That is not the case. If not declared as savings and used to augment existing but deficient items of appropriation, the shortfalls get carried over to the succeeding year, and are―at least most of them―eventually disbursed.”

“That is why I refer to the problem as delayed spending by agencies, not underspending,” Abad explained in a text message.

“If you want to sum up what is not spent, you should count what is returned to the Bureau of the Treasury. That is the more accurate way of doing it,” Abad also said.

“And without checking the data, I can tell you with confidence that [the unspent amount] will not come to P1 trillion,” Abad said.

“Don’t get more wrong: I don’t tolerate delayed and underspending, I truly don’t. And I’d be happy if Diokno is able to minimize them. But let us present them accurately,” he added.

The former Budget chief had blamed underspending on institutional weakness in the government, which had not been used to spending so much money. It was also  a result of the Aquino administration’s fiscal discipline policies.

He said that before the end of the Aquino administration, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) worked to address spending bottlenecks, including the adoption of a policy authorizing departments and agencies to advance preprocurement activities which would  enable them to bid projects short-of-award, Abad said. The DBM had likewise ordered agencies to fill up positions at procurement units of their respective bids and awards committees.

Also, Abad had urged Congress to force government agencies to spend their annual budgets within only one year instead of the current two-year lapsing of appropriations.

The slow spending was   blamed for failures to more  quickly respond to rehabilitation needs after disasters such as Supertyphoon “Yolanda.”

It may also be recalled that the Aquino administration was beset by controversies regarding the release of pork barrel funds and its Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), an economic pump-priming measure that the Supreme Court eventually ruled as unconstitutional.