NATIONAL Security Adviser Hermogenes C. Esperon Jr. said last Sunday the Bureau of the Treasury has already been released 100 percent of the funds for the village-level counter-insurgency program to local government units (LGUs).
Esperon, chairman of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), added that the P16.44 billion total fund of the Barangay Development Program (BDP) were utilized, monitored and disseminated by the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) and Department of Budget and Management with transparency.
Esperon issued the statement last Sunday after the budget of the NTF-ELCAC was trimmed down to just P4 billion. The move was allegedly due to failure of the agency to provide Congress reports on the utilization of BDP.
The Senate Committee on Finance has slashed from the proposed P28 billion to just P4 billion the 2022 budget of the task force after failing to submit to both houses of Congress the detailed reports on the utilization of the P16 billion budget for this year.
According to Esperon, the NTF-ELCAC has been submitting the required reports in coordination with the DBM and DILG.
Esperon said that upon the release of the Notice of Authority to Debit Account Issued (Nadai) to the LGUs concerned, the funds are now deemed available for use in the procurement process. However, due to procedural requirements of the procurement law, implementation of some projects has started in April 2021.
“While we are aware that the fund utilization is up to December 21, 2022, we are confident that most, if not all, of the 2,318 projects will be completed by the middle of 2022,” Esperon said.
“We take transparency and accountability to heart, as it is the core of our monitoring team of the BDP. In fact, we have created the transparency page of the NTF-ELCAC website where progress reports of the program are listed down to the barangay level,” the National Security Adviser added.
Esperon said that for this year, the funds have benefitted 822 barangays in 39 provinces, covering 2,029 infrastructure projects (like farm-to-market roads, water sanitation system, health station, school building, electrification, housing) and 289 non-infrastructure projects (such as agricultural and livelihood, Covid-19 health related projects and assistance to indigent families).
The National Security Adviser added that of the 2,318 BDP projects, 26 have already been completed while 582 are currently ongoing. The 1,047 are on the procurement stage and 663 are on pre-procurement stage.
For 2022, the proposal of the NTF-ELCAC is to provide BDP to 1,406 barangays because they were already cleared from the influence of the New People’s Army and other so-called communist terrorist groups.