The seeds of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) were sown as early as the first five months of the Aquino presidency, the leader of a militant group said, citing two memos from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).
Copies of the memos were emailed on Sunday to The Manila Times by Renato Reyes, secretary general of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan).
“Looking back, it is possible that it was the Aquino government that caused the conditions of underspending as early as 2010 by not releasing appropriations, letting the problem persist till 2011, so they will have a reason for introducing a stimulus program called DAP,” Reyes said.
The program would “address the underspending they themselves created. By this time, huge funds would already be centralized under the President,” he said.
The administration of President Benigno Aquino 3rd would then be guilty of bad faith, Reyes said.
The DBM issued the memos on October 12, 2011 and December 12, 2011, barely five months after Aquino assumed office.
The documents show that as early as November 25, 2010, the President declared as “savings” some P21.544 billion in unreleased appropriations for “slow moving projects and programs for discontinuance.”
Aquino also authorized the DBM to use these funds for “priority projects”.
Another P12.336 billion from the 2010 unprogrammed funds would be added to what would become the DAP of October 2011.
Also added to the DAP funds were P30 billion in unreleased personal services appropriations for 2011, and P482 million in unreleased appropriations for “slow moving” and discontinued projects for 2011. Another P7.7 billion for realignment within agencies was included in the funds under the control of the President.
“By October 2011, Aquino had wide discretion over P72.1 billion in DAP funds which he could appropriate for projects not found in the national budget and for augmentation of the special purpose funds like PDAF. The administration’s use of the P12.336 billion unprogrammed funds from 2010 would be a violation of the law based on the SC ruling. Same goes for the so-called P21.544 billion ‘savings’ from 2010,” Reyes said.
He noted that in its ruling declaring parts of the DAP as unconstitutional, the Supreme Court noted that obligated funds for slow moving projects, and projects not up for final discontinuance cannot be declared savings because “savings can only be generated if the projects have been completed or if the projects are finally discontinued or abandoned.”
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