Cash allocation notices reach P841 B in 5 months

MANILA, Philippines -  A month before a new administration takes over, more than half of agency funds remain available for disbursement even as the outgoing government accelerated spending in May.

A total of P841.53 billion in notices of cash allocation (NCA) were issued to departments and offices for the first five months, data from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) showed.

The amount accounted for 40.6 percent of P2.07 trillion in budget for departments and special purpose funds used primarily to support local governments and state companies.

NCA allows agencies to secure checks from the Bureau of the Treasury to pay for contracted services. Once checks are encashed, funds are deemed disbursed.

The 2016 budget is worth P3.002 trillion. The balance of P930.7 billion are in the form of automatic appropriations allocated for debt payments, pension and grants and donations.

“We should continue to make sure that our implementing agencies are able to improve on their budget execution and absorption capacities,” Budget Secretary Florencio Abad told reporters.

He made the comment as he expressed support to the plan of his successor, Benjamin Diokno, to increase infrastructure spending to five percent of economic output from last year’s 3.3 percent.

That, in turn, will boost the budget deficit to three percent from 0.9 percent last year.

While the Aquino administration has been criticized for persistently falling below spending targets, Abad said the DBM was able to improve both expenditure quantity and quality.

“We have forced agencies to think more in the medium and longer term and to look for better priorities. At the same time, we also need to have a certain degree of measurableness,” he said in a forum last week in Pasay City.

As of May, 92.1 percent or P775.32 billion of total NCA releases were already utilized, indicating checks were already claimed, DBM data showed.

Of that amount, P755.3 billion worth of checks were actually disbursed and P19.59 billion were still left unencashed. Around P66 billion represented NCAs still with offices which are not yet claiming their checks.

The Commission on Elections, which organized the presidential polls last May 9, topped agencies in terms of NCA utilization rate at 99.6 percent.

It was followed by Commission on Human Rights and Office of the President (98.8 percent) and National Economic and Development Authority (94.9 percent).