P10-billion NTF-Elcac ‘pork’ funds flagged anew

Sen. Sonny Angara —Senate PRIB

With an admission from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) that the proposed P10-billion funding for the government’s anticommunist task force did not include details on how the allotment would be disbursed, senators on Thursday said the money might just end up as a “pork barrel” fund.

They questioned the proposed allocation for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac) by the DBM in the 2023 national budget despite the task force’s failure to disclose how it had used the billions of pesos it was given in previous years.

“That’s pork barrel based on the definition of the Supreme Court because when (Congress) passes the General Appropriations Act, there must already be an identification of projects as much as possible,” said Sen. Sonny Angara, Senate finance committee chair.

No project reports

Angara was reacting to a briefing by Budget Undersecretary Tina Marie Rose Canda on the special purpose funds in the 2023 National Expenditure Program (NEP).“You’re the budgetary experts, so how do you judge that?” he told DBM officials led by Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman.

Responding to questioning by Senate finance vice chair Sen. Nancy Binay, Canda admitted that the task force had not submitted a report of its completed projects funded under the 2021 and 2022 national budgets.

“How would you now justify the additional P10 billion for next year when we do not even know what is going on with its (previous) budget?” Binay said.

Binay lamented the NTF-Elcac’s low completion of its 2021 projects, which amounted to P16 billion.

“With the ongoing projects worth P2.9 billion, and P3.2 billion in completed projects, it’s not even 50 percent of the P16 billion, so the rest remains in limbo,” she said.

The senator noted that the NTF-Elcac, created in December 2018, has been receiving funds for several years now and was expected to report on finished community projects, such as school buildings and farm-to-market roads.

“It’s 2022, so they should have at least started with something already,” Binay said.

Given ‘some leeway’

Canda said the proposed NTF-Elcac funding did not have details on the projects because these were supposed to be identified only during implementation.“We gave them some leeway in the identification of the projects, especially because of the intent of the fund,” she said.

The task force initially asked for P20 billion, but the DBM set the allocation for each barangay supposedly “cleared” of communist rebels to P4 million, according to Canda.

“The justification (for the requested funding) corresponds to the number of cleared barangays; we allocated (the amount) based on the representation of NTF-Elcac,” she said.

Citing DBM records, Canda said the task force was allotted P19.2 billion, including P16.4 billion as special purpose funds, in 2021.

In 2020, about P1.8 billion was released to the NTF-Elcac, but this was distributed across various implementing agencies, the DBM official said.

Angara urged the DBM to direct the NTF-Elcac to submit a list of its completed projects.

The Commission on Audit had flagged the task force for its “low absorptive capacity.”

“We want to know if these figures are true since many have been suspicious of (the NTF-Elcac),” he said.

Pangandaman said they had informed the NTF-Elcac of the need to submit an accomplishment report but it has yet to comply.

READ: NTF-ELCAC budget for 2023 may be higher, not lower, says solon