Total amount of Yolanda donations unknown

MANILA, Philippines – In total, how much humanitarian aid and donations were received by the Philippines during Typhoon Yolanda?

No one knows exactly.

Two years after the fiercest storm to ever hit land devastated central Philippines, the country remains blind on the propensity of aid coming in whenever a disaster strikes, putting at risk efforts to ensure every peso goes to its intended beneficiaries.

Using the billions of pesos collected during Yolanda back in November 2013, The STAR tracked down mechanisms in place to ensure transparency and accountability in money poured every year into the country that attracts an average of 20 typhoons annually.

After asking various sources, nobody seemed to have a definite answer.

We first went to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), the agency in charge of the Foreign Aid Transparency Hub (FAiTH), an online platform during Yolanda that recorded aid coming from varying channels coursed through the government.

Last week, its website said a total of P73.31 billion was donated.

The amount, however, only represents government-to-government transactions, those that were delivered through embassies, some from multilateral organizations and civil society groups. Outside its mantle, FAiTH does not cover billions of pesos funneled directly into non-government organizations (NGOs), those that went directly to local government units and hand-delivered donations.

“The coordination has been weak,” Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said Thursday on the sidelines of a briefing on Yolanda reconstruction.

DBM had envisioned FAiTH as a start-up for the Philippine government to track down all humanitarian aid coming into the country beginning then. Being part of the Pacific “Ring of Fire” with typhoons as frequent visitors, Abad said the government realizes the need to track these donations to ensure efficient utilization. But that has not happened two years on.

“Given the magnitude of the damage of Yolanda and the corresponding outpouring of international support, it was only when the typhoon hit in 2013 that there was a consolidated effort to track humanitarian aid coming in the country,” the DBM said in a statement.

“Fortunately, we have not encountered a super typhoon again like Yolanda which would generate and drive relief aid that is supposed to reflect on the website,” the DBM replied on questions from The STAR.

Locate first

Under FAiTH, the government has set a donation flowchart that sums up how should aid be treated. Three tracks were set: information flow, cash flow and goods flow. The latter two go directly from donors to the deployment agencies that included the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), Department of Health and the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), among others.

However, the “information flow” is a different thing. Abad said that segment should allow pertinent agencies to record donation inflows during Yolanda.

For instance, those coming from the embassies would have to be tallied by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA). We then went to the DFA to ask if they could provide us data on how much aid was received by the country from overseas; Foreign Affairs spokesman Charles Jose pointed to the NDRRMC or DSWD.

DSWD Assistant Secretary Vilma Cabrera, for her part, said what the agency can only provide is aid funneled to it.

“We won’t have those that comes from OCD (Office of Civil Defense) or NDRRMC. That kind of data, DBM would have or NEDA (National Economic and Development Authority) because they were assigned as the coordinating agency during Yolanda,” Cabrera said.