Bayan Muna Party-list group has disapproved President Rodrigo Duterte’s statement that the social amelioration program to the poor could not be sustain further due to lack of funds to support the program.
According to Bayan Muna chair Neri Colmenares said there are about P291-billion of funds which can be sourced from creditors and savings of various government agencies.
Money collected from these agencies are more than enough to fund the P270-billion budget needed for amelioration program for the people following the Luzon lockdown due to the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) which was further extended by Duterte until April 30.
Our of these possible source of funds are the unreleased appropriations due to discontinued projects—P189.823 billion; and advance remittances from the Philippine Ports Authority, Manila
International Airport Authority and Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines—P10 billion; Cebu Ports Authority—P500 million.
The former senatorial candidate, emphasized that Duterte can also make use of funds through the collected dividends from 12 government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs) amounting to P78.6 billion and unutilized funds from the Department of Energy—P12.34 billion.
“It is not true that there are no funds to support the P270 billion outlay for the amelioration fund. Nagpapaawa lang sya kunyari para matabunan ang kapalpakan niya,” Colmenares said.
Furthermore, Deputy Minority Floor Leader Carlos Zarate said “that there are yet untapped” bugdet amounting to billions in the which were actually contained in the President’s second report to Congress last Monday but it seems that the president “is very slow and inefficient in tapping these funds.”
“It is not true that the reason for the confusion and the failure to give financial assistance to people is because there are no funds,” Zarate said.
Zarate also stressed that Duterte’s second report showed that there are still billions in “unreleased appropriations” because the current administration is still “crafting guidelines” for release of livelihood assistance.
“They said that there are available funds but President Duterte is hiding his inability and inefficiency in allocating resources and distributing financial assistance to the people,” Zarate added.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) started releasing last April 3 the financial assistance to the affected deserving poorest beneficiaries under the Social Amelioration Program (SAP) Bayanihan Fund: Tulong Laban sa COVID-19.
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