The Commission on Audit (COA) called out the Department of Agriculture (DA) for its “low” disbursement rate as it was only able to release 62.32 percent of its P39-billion budget last year.
In its annual audit report, the COA said the DA received a total allotment amounting to P39.706 billion last year, of which P38.448 billion was obligated. Of the total obligated funds, only P24.743 billion was disbursed by the DA.
“We recommended and Management agreed to require the concerned program directors of each DA offices to review and monitor its operations to determine bottlenecks and/or reasons for the low disbursement of funds,” the state audit agency said in the report published recently on its web site.
The state auditors noted that under the Department of Budget and Management Circular 567, all heads of agencies are directed to “ensure obligation of programs, activities and projects funded under CY 2017 GAA not later than December 31, 2017.”
Based on the COA report, about 13 DA offices recorded a low disbursement rate of less than 75 percent, or ranging from 17.99 percemt to 73.69 percent.
“The FAPs [foreign-assisted projects] had the lowest disbursement rate of 17.99 percent and this was mainly due to the delayed implementation of the Philippine Rural Development Project [PRDP],” the state auditors said.
The total allotment of FAPs amounted to P4.816 billion, which includes the allotment to PRDP of P4.747 billion. Of the total allotment, P4.086 billion was obligated but only P735.156 million was disbursed by the end of 2017.
In its response included in the annual audit report, the DA said the low disbursement rate was due to the following reasons:
- The DA-Central Office (CO) received an allotment of P150 million in 2017 to implement the Agriculture Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (ACEF) Scholarship Program. However, pursuant to Republic Act 10848, implementation of the said program was designated to the Commission on Higher Education starting 2017, thus P12.857 million or only 8.5 percent was disbursed by the DA-CO;
- Late submission of disbursement vouchers (DV) for processing and payment. Likewise, documentations attached to the DVs were incomplete;
- Lack of manpower to provide assistance to programs to fast-track disbursements;
- Delays in the procurement process occurred, thus, awarding of projects were delayed resulting in the delayed implementation thereof;
- Difficulties in gathering the complete master lists of beneficiaries with respect to distribution of agricultural products;
- Failure to the contractor to finish the infrastructure projects during the year, hence, no disbursement was made for payment thereof;
- Nonliquidation of previous fund transfers to implementing agencies, thus no additional releases were made; and
- Obligations were made only during the last few days of the year to avoid the lapse of allotment, thus, disbursements were not made during the year.