P90-B revenues lost to Road Board graft – Speaker

MANILA, Philippines -  An estimated P90.7 billion in government revenues have been lost through the graft-ridden Road Board, Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez said, citing the findings of the Commission on Audit (COA).

“The Road Board is just another layer of bureaucracy, which became another avenue for graft and corruption,” Alvarez said.

Alvarez said there was a “pattern of anomalies” at least for the past decade, where COA unearthed signs of illegal use of the Road Fund, estimated to have amounted to a total of P90.7 billion from 2001 to December 2012.

From 2001 to 2010, COA also noted discrepancies amounting to P1.4 billion in the total collection of Road User’s Tax between the collections declared by the Land Transportation Office and the certification from the Bureau of Treasury.

Alvarez also disclosed that some P515.5 million of the Road Fund was used in 2004 to 2008 for payment of salaries, allowances, maintenance and other operating expenses properly chargeable to the regular budget.

Also in 2011, some P62.5 million of the Road Fund was used for the Road Board’s engineering and administrative overhead expenses. This is on top of the P1.6 billion anomalies discovered in 2013, he said. 

Alvarez filed House Bill 6236 seeking to transfer the Road Board’s functions to the Departments of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and Transportation (DOTr), owing to its billions of misappropriations that the national government collects as Road User’s Tax. 

The Road Board, suspected by many to have been a source of deep-rooted corruption, was created under Republic Act 8794, which imposed a motor vehicle user’s charge on owners of all types of motor vehicles.

Alvarez proposed that all Road Fund collections should be remitted to the National Treasury and appropriated to the proper government departments such as the DPWH and the DOTr, which will implement the road safety measures and projects.

The measure retained, however, the original provision of the law that requires funds collected under RA 8794 (Road Board charter) pertaining to the Trust Fund for Pollution Control, shall be appropriated to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Under its charter, the Road Board is tasked to ensure prudent and efficient management and use of special funds known as the Road User’s Tax (or Road Fund), which is earmarked solely and exclusively for road maintenance and improvement of road drainage, installation of efficient traffic lights and road safety devices, and air pollution control.