P50 million given to NGOs remains unliquidated

CEBU, Philippines — The Commission on Audit has questioned P50 million worth of unliquidated funds given the Cebu City government gave to different non-governmental organizations and people’s organizations in the previous years.

In its Annual Audit Report, COA said the unliquidated funds in the books of accounts are due to the city’s laxity requiring the submission of the liquidation and utilization reports of the NGOs/POs.

“We recommend instituting action against the defaulting NGOs/POs pursuant to the provisions of the Memorandum of Agreement and the COA Circular 2007-001,” read portion of the report.

COA said several NGOs/POs already submitted their liquidation reports but were suspended and returned or pending in the pre-audit section of the accounting office, that is why they remained unrecorded.

Of the P50 million, at least P29.6 million in funds remained unliquidated due to the non-submission of the utilization or liquidation reports by the NGOs/POs.

Also, NGOs and/or POs have submitted liquidation reports totaling P10.9 million of the P50 million but were suspended in the City Accounting Office. These liquidation reports were not yet recorded because of deficiencies or lack of documents required from the organizations.

Another set of liquidation reports on funds amounting to P29.6 million was pending in pre-audit section of the accounting office because the assigned auditors did not apprise the COA yet on the status of the liquidation reports.

The commission stated that the city entered into MOA with different organizations. In the MOA, the city may resort to institute legal remedies against the organizations if they fail to complete the projects.

COA said the city can also take legal actions if there are provisions in the MOA that are violated.  The NGO/PO may also be subjected to disqualification from applying for another project in any government organizations.

“Based on the records in the e-NGAS and the manual monitoring of the receivable accounts by the Accounting Office, funds transferred to NGOs/POs still have a total unliquidated balance of P50,021,806,” the report read.

With this, COA asked the city to instruct the accounting office to send formal demand letters to the organizations with suspended liquidations reports to submit all documents and explain the deficiencies noted during the pre-audit.

Further, the commission directed the Accounting Office to process the liquidation reports submitted by the organizations. —JMD (FREEMAN)