DBM Helds up Candidates ‘Pork’ Barrel Release

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) seems to have frozen lawmaker’s pork barrel fund releases. Electoral candidates were among of those who has their pork barrel fund temporarily unavailable.

With the campaign period at its peak and the election is almost here, there are issues on how candidates has been spending their pork barrel fund. However, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) didn’t prohibit the DBM to continue disbursing senators’ and congressmen’s allocations from the P25-billion Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF).

PDAF is the official name of the congressional pork barrel. P200 million per year budget is given to every senator while P70 million per year is allocated for every member of the House of Representatives.

It has been reported that the DBM website yesterday appeared to have the PDAF has not changed from its P10.6-billion level last April 5. The data says that for almost two weeks, no new releases has been made.

This also means that if the funds released were small amounts of money not affecting the total.

Sources: abs-cbnnews.com, philstar.com