The Department of Agriculture (DA) on Thursday assured the public that there is no corruption involved in the handling of its 2020 funds, including Bayanihan budget, after a state audit report showed that the department had nearly P12 billion of unutilized budget.
In a news statement, the DA explained that their initial response to the findings of the Commission on Audit (COA) were already included in the annual audit report of state auditors, which was released publicly last July 13.
“The COA has given the DA sixty [60] days from receipt of CAAR [Consolidated Annual Audit Report], within which to give updates on the findings,” it said.
“As per DA Undersecretary for administration and finance Roldan Gorgonio, we received the COA report on July 2, 2021. Therefore, we still have until September 2, 2021, to satisfy the COA’s observations through our categorical replies,” it added.
Since July, the DA said it has been consolidating respective reports from concerned offices and operating units to resolve the issues raised by the COA.
In a separate interview with reporters on Thursday, Agriculture Secretary William D. Dar said the issues raised by state auditors were concerns on documentation and procedures.
“We are taking this seriously and we are giving them the right documents that they need and, at the same time, I would assure the public that there is no irregularity nor corruption,” he said.
“While I am still in the DA, we have vowed and made a covenant of no to corruption. I will continue to fulfill my no corruption advocacy until the last day of my service to the Filipino people,” he added.
Dar also noted that the amount of funding that was returned to the National Treasury was “insignificant.”
The annual audit report of COA on the DA indicated that P9.8 billion of its cash allocation for 2020 was unutilized and thus was returned to the National Treasury.
The reasons behind the non-utilization included “delayed delivery of goods, delayed submission of disbursement vouchers, and non-implementation of projects and activities due to constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
On top of this, the COA said P2.192 billion out of the DA’s P24.842 billion under the Bayanihan I and II were unobligated “due to the delays in procurement process, non-implementation of projects due to unavailability of seeds and late release of funds.”
The COA also flagged P2.075 billion worth of procurement contracts in nine DA offices that were approved and awarded to various suppliers despite lacking supporting documents required under existing rules and regulations.
State auditors also noted that there are concerns regarding the DA’s fertilizer subsidy program such as the overpayment of reimbursement amounting to P214.894 million and unreliability of reimbursement of P963,000.
They noted that there were errors and disparities in the unit cost of fertilizer used by farmers for reimbursement, the unit price and number of bags used in the computation of reimbursement, and incorrect data on area and lack of data on the number of fertilizers procured amounting to P328,000.
The COA also pointed out that the total reported number of beneficiaries that claimed reimbursement of fertilizer assistance with the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) exceeded the total number of beneficiaries under the DA’s master list.
Furthermore, the COA report also showed that there were issues regarding the DA’s cash and food subsidy to marginalized farmers and fisher folks (CFSMFF) program.
For one, there was an over remittance of payroll amounting to P35.831 million caused by double or even triple counting of some 7,146 beneficiaries, according to the report. On the other hand, about 1,317 farmer beneficiaries who have claimed the P3,000 financial assistance were not included in the master list submitted by the DA to the DBP.
The COA report also revealed that 67 Official Development Assistance -funded I-Build and I-Reap subprojects worth P2.178 billion are “already beyond the target date of completion thereby delaying the delivery of benefits to the intended recipients.” 30
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