Low absorption capacity: Where are the unutilized funds of agencies?

In its initial presentation of the P5.7 trillion national outlay for 2024 before the House of Representatives committee on appropriations, Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman admitted that only 30.5 percent of last year’s allocation has been utilized by the agencies, which means that almost 70 percent is still uncommitted appropriations by end of the first quarter.

Firstly, that indicates the special allotment release orders or Saros of projects for the year were not all given out for implementation; so many projects could still be in limbo and/or uncompleted toward the end of the year 2023.

Secondly, she added that the first quarter fund use was very poor, 5.6 percent to 10 percent, so the agencies only spent one-third of their first quarter operating needs. How did they survive? So, not only were projects unimplemented, but money sent to the agencies was not spent. Who’s now going to answer these problems and clear them up?

Either we are not monitoring what the agencies are doing, or have no progress report on what they’re supposed to do. Now, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) wants Congress to believe that we have a well-studied 2024 budget, with all of these trailing of uncompleted staff work on unresolved financial mess over the years.

For the DBM, it’s unbelievable that we can run such an organization with mere statistical data. Any taxpayer listening and assessing the credibility of the presentation would be very disappointed.

Congress, in the face of the low GDP for the second quarter of only 4.3 percent, way below the year’s expectations, should take time, albeit delay for the greater good, the approval of the 2024 budget and probe further the fund accountability of prior years that the Commission on Audit reports have shown of unutilized or underutilized funds, and projects unimplemented and unaccounted for over several years. Funds have been released to them but not used and may have been set aside somewhere, for whatever reasons. Where are these funds?

It would be lamentable that the huge 2024 budget of P5.7 trillion on an expected income of P4.2 trillion will be approved and glossed over by Congress with so many unresolved fund discrepancies. Continuing to run government economic affairs this way will just be doomsday for the country.

Marvel K. Tan,

marvelktan@yahoo.com