Drilon wants full inventory of all Mindanao aid, grants

DAVAO CITY — Senate President Franklin Drilon is urging the government to conduct a comprehensive inventory of all overseas development assistance (ODA) packages and other loans and grants that have been extended to Mindanao, especially in the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

"It’s about time that we have a proper accounting of all these funds. We should know where these funds went and what is now the status of all the projects (they had financed)," he said.

The outpouring of international assistance to Mindanao mounted after the signing of the peace agreement between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in September 1992.

Development and rehabilitation programs formed part of the concessions the government had granted to the Muslim secessionist group.

"We should know where all the funds went so that we will know what to do next," Drilon said.

He said the foreign-funded projects should be scrutinized since they were carried out with local counterpart funds.

A few years back, he said there was an attempt to consolidate all the aid packages and grants to Mindanao but this did not prosper.

Among Mindanao’s foreign donors were the World Bank, the United States Agency for International Development, Canadian International Development Agency, the Japanese International Bank of Cooperation, the Asian Development Bank and the United Nations Development Program.

The Organization of Islamic Conference and other Muslim countries, either individually or as a group, have also extended assistance to Mindanao.