The report comes as several legislators have asked the government to probe PITC’s failure to return P11.02 billion in unused funds to the Treasury or their client agencies.
AFTER being flagged for ‘parking’ more than P11 billion in unused fund transfers, the Philippine International Trading Corp. (PITC) has reportedly returned half of those funds to the national treasury.
In a report by Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez, PITC has remitted a total of P5.2billion to the Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) in the first half of 2021.
The PITC’s remittance was in response to Dominguez’s request to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) last year for the state-run firm to return its interest earnings to the BTr and funds for projects that have not been bid out or for suspension, to help augment the government’s funds on Covid-19 response and disaster relief efforts.
According to a report by the Corporate Affairs Group (CAG) of the Department of Finance (DOF), the PITC also returned P1.89 billion to its client-agencies–the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), University of the Philippines (UP) Los Banos, UP System, Department of Health (DOH), among others–for projects identified as no longer necessary, and paid P1.82 billion to its suppliers from January to June this year.
As of end-June 2021, PITC’s fund transfers from different government agencies for various procurement programs amounted to P22.7 billion, down from the P31.6 billion balance as of end-2020, the CAG said in its report to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III during a recent DOF executive committee meeting.
The report comes as several legislators have asked the government to probe PITC’s failure to return P11.02 billion in unused funds to the Treasury or their client agencies.
In a statement, Senator Franklin Drilon said the DOF should direct the PITC to remit the flagged amount to the Treasury, expanding the government’s resourcing in distributing cash subsidies to families affected by the lockdown.
He also demanded that the practice of parking funds in the PITC be stopped.
“This practice of parking funds with this GOCC (government-owned and controlled corporation) must stop. The government is hard up due to the drop in revenues. If they cannot disburse the funds just return them to national coffers,” Drilon said.
Tags: #PhilippineInternationalTradingCorp, #unusedfunds, #BureauOfTheTreasury, #DepartmentOfFinance