Yolanda aid falls far short of pledges, DBM says

PLEDGES that have not materialized and lack of coordination with funding partners have hindered reconstruction efforts in Yolanda-affected provinces, Budget Secretary Florencio B. Abad yesterday said.

“The problem is that a significant portion of the foreign aid have remained as pledges, while those that may have materialized have not been released directly to the Philippine government, especially for UN (United Nations) agencies,” Mr. Abad said.

Based on data obtained from the Foreign Aid Transparency Hub of the Philippine government, foreign aid pledged totaled P73.31 billion: P45.11 billion in cash and P28.2 billion in noncash items.

Of the total, only P17.23 billion was received: P1.2 billion in cash and P1.27 billion in noncash items for the government while P14.76 billion went to the private sector, multilateral institutions and nongovernmental organizations (NGO).

“So the ones that need to explain are the NGOs and multilateral institutions ( since they received bulk of the foreign aid). People are barking up the wrong tree if the government should explain everything,” Mr. Abad said.

“It’s hard to spend money that has not been received,” he added.

“They also have to explain. The photo opportunities were complete when they came here. Whatever happened to the nice photo ops?” he said.

Mr. Abad added lack of coordination with the private sector also hounded the reconstruction of Yolanda-affected communities.

“In hindsight, I think the international NGOs and multilateral groups, and even the private sector, would have done well in building the capacity of communities and local government units ( LGU) to undertake the rehabilitation and reconstruction projects directly so that we could then be able to release directly through the communities or LGUs, rather than go through the bureaucratic maze from the national government, and then it goes to the regional offices and provincial offices,” Mr. Abad said.

“Insofar as budget requirements, we are complete up to 2016. We have provided the requirements, this P185.2 billion, we are already covered. The real challenge here is execution,” he added. —