COA says DBM, NEDA Honoraria illegal: 2 gov't offices to repay P.2M

The Commission on Audit has ordered the regional directors and several staff of the Department of Budget and Management-7 and National Economic Development Authority-7 to refund the honoraria they earlier received amounting to P199,765 because these were illegal disbursements.

DBM-7 regional director Carmela Fernan was ordered to refund the government P5,700 she received as honorarium while NEDA-7 regional director Romeo Escandor was also directed to return P6,000.

Other NEDA staff, who served as members of the regional project monitoring committee of the Regional Development Council, were likewise ordered to refund the honoraria that they received respectively.

RDC officials were also ordered by COA to return to the local governments of Minglanilla, Liloan, Cordova and Compostela a total of P257,404 in unused funds, which were intended for different projects. COA cited an existing DBM policy that government officials and employees already receiving regular salaries from their respective agencies are no longer entitled to receive honoraria -a regulation contained in DBM circular 2003-5 issued on September 26, 2003.

But records showed that Fernan still received an honorarium, via check number 0985860 dated July 28, 2004. Escandor got his share through check number 0985843 dated July 7, 2004 while the rest of the NEDA employees partook of the remaining P188,065.

The COA report said that except for Fernan, "All the payees are NEDA staff who are regularly receiving salaries. This condition contradicts the requirement of the budget circular that the staff to be entitled to honorarium should not be paid any salaries."

Considering then that the disbursement of the honoraria violated the DBM policy, COA was prompted to order the refund.

NEDA officials have explained that the honoraria granted to the members and the secretariat of the RDC panel was based on RDC's executive resolution number 16 (series of 2001) signed by then RDC chairman Erico Aumentado.

The RDC was created in 1972 as the government's central planning body, exercising the functions then vested in the National Economic Council, Presidential Economic Staff and other ad-hoc economic bodies. Its main task is supervising the implementation of NEDA projects, planning and policy formulation, investment programming, monitoring and evaluation.