COA Questions Supreme Court’s P3.19-B Savings in 2012 Budget

The Commission on Audit (COA) has questioned the P3.19 billion from the Supreme Court (SC) budget that the court declared as savings in 2012, GMA News online reported Tuesday.

According to COA’s 2012 audit report, the high court has P3.19 billion in unspent funds from the P15-billion notices of cash allocations (NCA). The report said this was received from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) that year.

COA aks why the SC declared such huge savings when it had several unpaid obligations during that year, the online news reported. The COA said that since the SC declared P3.19 billion of its NCA as “savings”, payments for its obligations incurred in 2012 were taken from the SC’s 2013 budget.

The Commission said this practice was against the law on government spending, report said.

The SC, meanwhile, in its reply to the COA report, said it has been a practice of the high court to declare unspent funds as “savings” saying it has its own policies when it comes to spending, report said.

In his televised national address Monday, President Benigno Aquino III lashed over the SC’s decision that the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), formulated under his term, was partially unconstitutional.

The SC ruled as unconstitutional the declaration of unobligated and unprogrammed funds as “savings”, the “cross-border” transfer of savings of the executive branch to the other branches of the government, and the funding of projects not stated in the General Appropriations Act (GAA).

Source: GMA News Online