Malampaya fund: Case of the missing P25B

A House leader on Wednesday called on the Bureau of Treasury (BTr) to account for the P25-billion discrepancy in the current balance of the controversial Malampaya fund per its status reports and account books.

Occidental Rep. Josephine Ramirez-Sato said the BTr should explain what happened to the “missing” P25 billion discovered and flagged by the Commission on Audit (COA) in its 2016 annual audit for the bureau released recently.

“The Bureau of Treasury should explain the discrepancy in the current balance of the Malampaya fund.  What happened to this P25 billon?” said Sato, a vice chair of the House economic affairs committee and member of the energy committee.

Sato cited an Inquirer story quoting from the COA report that flagged sizable discrepancies between cash releases and remittances of the fund representing government royalties from the offshore natural gas project in the Camago-Malampaya Reservoir located in the West Philippine Sea.

COA said the differences amounted to P20.95 billion in cash releases and P4.19 billion in remittances as of December 2016, “casting doubt on the reliability of the balance of the Malampaya fund.”