{"id":55607,"date":"2015-07-14T09:25:15","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T01:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=55607"},"modified":"2015-07-14T09:25:15","modified_gmt":"2015-07-14T01:25:15","slug":"lacson-discretionary-funds-still-in-2015-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/07\/14\/lacson-discretionary-funds-still-in-2015-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Lacson: Discretionary funds still in 2015 budget"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Presidential<\/a>
\u00a0(Photo by Benhur Arcayan\/Malaca\u00f1ang Photo Bureau)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA —\u00a0Former Sen. Panfilo Lacson revealed that lump-sum or discretionary funds can still be found in the 2015 national budget.<\/p>\n

Lacson said that his team found out that the corruption-prone lump-sum appropriations is at P424 billion and could still go up.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have already discovered a total of P424 billion worth of lump-sum appropriations, a.k.a. discretionary funds, parked in the budget of just 11 of the 21 major line agencies of the national government. Hold your breath. It is still counting,\u201d Lacson said.<\/p>\n

The senator was speaking before the Philippine Institute of Certified Public Accountants at the Intercontinental Hotel in Makati City.<\/p>\n

Lacson’s group found the following lump-sums on various departments:<\/p>\n

\u2014 Department of Social Welfare and Development, P102.6 billion;<\/p>\n

\u2014 Department of Education, P80.7 billion;<\/p>\n

\u2014 Department of Interior and Local Government, P80.7 billion;<\/p>\n

\u2014 Department of Health, P75.4 billion;<\/p>\n

\u2014 Department of National Defense, P66.4 billion;<\/p>\n

\u2014 Department of Agriculture, P29.9 billion;<\/p>\n

\u2014 Department of Public Works and Highways, P11.4 billion;<\/p>\n

\u2014 Department of Transportation and Communications, P11.4 billion;<\/p>\n

\u2014 National Irrigation Authority, P13 billion;<\/p>\n

\u2014 Philippine National Police, P6.7 billion;<\/p>\n

\u2014 Department of Environment and Natural Resources, P6.1 billion<\/p>\n

\u201cAs professional accountants serving the interest of the public, I may speak on your behalf when I frown upon discretionary funds as these are prone to misuse and corruption,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court earlier declared the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) as unconstitutional amid nationwide protests.<\/p>\n

Parts of the\u00a0Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), or the funds from savings of agencies used to provide budget for projects outside the approved national budget, were also declared unconstitutional by the SC.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the PDAF, we also discovered the obvious reincarnation of the SC unconstitutionality declared Budget Circular No. 541, which earlier gave the DBM (Department of Budget and Management) the authority to pool and declare as savings unobligated, unutilized and unreleased appropriations, not at the end of the fiscal year but the second quarter,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe found it in Section 70 and Section 73 of the General Provision of the 2015 GAA. Are we now looking at the rebirth of the DAP?\u201d Lacson\u00a0wondered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA —\u00a0Former Sen. Panfilo Lacson revealed that lump-sum or discretionary funds can still be found in the 2015 national budget. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":31189,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news-ph","mauthors-lei-fontamillas","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}