A TOTAL P2.807-trillion budget has been released or an equivalent of 93.5 percent of the appropriations for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno said on Monday. “Let me go direct to the point. Of the P3.001 trillion budget for FY 2016, P2.807 trillion has been released or equivalent to 93.5 percent of the appropriations,” said Diokno in his opening statement during the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on Public Expenditure at the Senate.
“If other releases are included, such as fund releases for continuing appropriations, unprogrammed appropriations, and other automatic appropriations, releases will total P2.877 trillion or 95.9 percent of the 2016 appropriations,” Diokno said.
Diokno said the FY 2016 appropriations of the Department of Public Works and Highways are at P482.03 billion, with an agency specific-budget of P384.29 billion, transfers from other agencies of P84.82 billion, and automatic appropriations of P12.82 billion.
Meanwhile, allotment releases totaled P464.33 billion, with P371.99 billion from the agency-specific budget, P84.51 billion from the transfers of other agencies, and P7.83 billion from automatic appropriations, Diokno said.
This leaves the DPWH with unreleased appropriations of P17.7 billion for FY 2016, he said.
Diokno said the bulk of the unreleased appropriations of DPWH’s agency-specific budget involved Routine Maintenance For Newly-Converted National Roads under Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses.
For Capital Outlays, unreleased appropriations stem from: Row (Right of |Way) Payments, Payments of Contractual Obligations, PPP Strategic Support Fund, and Various Infra Projects (including local projects).
Diokno said this totaled P12.016 billion.
For automatic appropriations, P4.987 billion was also unreleased coming from SAGF-MVUC (Special Accounts in the General Fund-Motor Vehicle User Charge).
These items are presented under the For Later Release (FLR) portion of NBC 561, which were not released due to non-submission of Special Budget Request (SBR) and details of claimants/nature of claims in the case of ROW and contractual obligations, Diokno said.
Next, for the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), the FY 2016 Budget totaled P110.412 billion.
Its agency-specific budget is at P109.977 billion while automatic appropriations totaled P435 million, said Diokno.
“All of these appropriations were released to DSWD. Hence, there are no unreleased appropriations as total appropriations matched total releases,” said Diokno.
On the Quick Response Fund releases for FY 2016 and FY 2017, Diokno said, in prior years, there was no distinction on which agencies are considered as first responders.
“Thus, there were departments/agencies which were provided QRF when, in fact, they should not be entitled to receive QRF but instead should charge their requirements under the NDRRMF (National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management),” said Diokno.
“In 2017, we defined the actual departments which should be entitled to the QRF. Also, we integrated all the agency requirements of QRF under the NDRRMF so that there can be faster and automatic augmentation of the agency QRF allocation,” Diokno said.
In 2016, QRF allocations to Departments totaled P6.215 billion with varying amounts for eight agencies, he said.
For 2017, QRF allocations are at P4.0 billion, with Department of Health having P500 million, Department of National Defense receiving P1.25 billion (P500 million to Office of Civil Defense; and P750 million to Armed Forces of the Philippines), P1.0 billion to DPWH, and P1.25 billion to DSWD.
For QRF Releases to DPWH in FY 2016 and FY 2017, for FY 2016, the built-in appropriations of P1.3 billion for Quick Response Fund (QRF) were fully released to DPWH.
Meanwhile, P8.182 billion in releases were made to DPWH sourced from the NDRRMF.
Diokno said, of this amount, P2.051 billion came from continuing appropriations in the FY 2015 Budget while P6.131 billion came from the FY 2016 Budget.
In total, P9.482 billion was released to DPWH in FY 2016, he said.