FUND USAGE by national government agencies improved in 2018 to 97% from 95% a year earlier, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) said.
The fund usage was measured via the Notice of Cash Allocations (NCA), the DBM said.
Meanwhile, the full-year result was unchanged from the third-quarter NCA utilization rate in the third quarter.
The NCA is a quarterly disbursement authority issued by the DBM to government agencies, allowing them to withdraw funds from the Bureau of the Treasury to pay for contracted projects.
Agencies used P2.89 trillion of the P2.98 trillion worth of NCA releases in 2018, with P89.84 billion left unused.
In the fourth quarter, national government agencies used a total of P811.4 billion worth of NCAs of the P834.9 billion the DBM released, leaving a balance of P23.5 billion worth of unused NCAs.
The Department of Public Works and Highways, the Judiciary, the Civil Service Commission, the Office of the Ombudsman as well as the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao logged a 100% utilization ratio in 2018.
Meanwhile, the Congress, the Department of the Interior and Local Government and the Department of National Defense tallied utilization rates of 99%.
On the other hand, “other executive offices” had the lowest NCA utilization rates last year at 71%, using only P51.62 billion out of the allocated P72.36 billion.
They were followed by the Department of Energy at 76% with unused NCAs amounting to P551.86 billion, and the Department of Tourism at 77%, with P890.58 billion worth of unused funds.
The government started to implement the annual cash-based budgeting scheme this year, from the previous two-year obligation-based system.
With the new appropriations scheme, inspection, verification, actual payment and delivery of goods and services must come within the fiscal year the budget was proposed for, providing an incentive for on-time implementation of state programs and projects.
However, the 2019 budget has yet to be passed by Congress and signed into law, following the criticism of the shift to a cash-based system and illegal “insertions” that favored certain districts. — Karl Angelo N. Vidal
