Budget Secretary Florencio B. Abad maintained that the administration has installed measures to monitor budget spending of agencies and detect irregularities through the Unified Account Code Structure (UACS).
He said the UACS of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) aims to streamline the budget process and create an environment of fiscal transparency and accountability in government.
The coding system, Abad explained is a tool that agencies and departments can use to help monitor the status of each government project, activity, or program (PAP), as well as to record government financial data.
“The beauty of the UACS is that as a classification system, it gives oversight agencies a common reference in tracking each individual government project or program. This will not only aid us in managing the government budget more efficiently, it will help us detect irregularities,” Abad said in a news statement released on Monday.
Abad issued the clarification following concerns raised by Sen. Panfilo Lacson on some confusions over the UACS serial numbers of the projects or programs in the 2015 General Appropriations Act (GAA) as well items that were not identified or “left blank.”
Budget Undersecretary Luz Cantor, likewise, said the codes in the UACS are generated by the system for each project or program that comes in but its presentation is different in the GAA document.
“In the GAA, these projects and programs are grouped according to project categories, which may account for the sequential variation,” Cantor said in the same statement issued by the budget department.
“Likewise, the UACS permanently maintains each project or program code in the system even if these have already been fully implemented in the past years or were disapproved. For clarity’s sake, these aren’t presented in the current GAA to avoid confusion,” Cantor said.
Abad also said most items in the GAA are disaggregated and itemized.
“Unless identified as aggregated or ‘lump-sum’ funds [like the Special Purpose Funds or SPFs], funds have a corresponding item noted in the GAA document,” Abad said.
He said the UACS system also helps the DBM in monitoring spending as each code identifies and describes the item and fund in the GAA, depending on the category.
Abad also said that under the UACS, each PAP will get a unique number code that can go as high as 54 digits. The code is also divided into five distinct subcategories (including the Commission on Audit’s Chart of Accounts) that describe every aspect of the PAP.
He said that each UACS code will also pinpoint the location of each PAP being implemented, up to varying degrees of specificity.
The UACS, Abad said is a big help for the DBM to monitor budget transactions, from appropriations and allotments to actual expenditures.
“Likewise, the system will allow others to derive and analyze data from each program or project, and later convert it to timely and useful information that will facilitate decision-making or policy-formation,” Abad said.