CoA bares housing loans irregularities
LOANS totaling P2.3 billion financed by the National Housing Authority (NHA) for the military, police, and informal settler families living in danger areas were not supported by Individual Loan Agreement (ILA), according to state auditors.
The observation was made in the Commission on Audit’s (CoA) Annual Audit Report on the NHA for 2016 and 2017.
“Loans in the total amount of P2.358 billion were not supported by [ILA] contrary to Section 4.6 of PD 1445, Section 7.6 of the TOR for Armed Forces of the Philippines/Philippine National Police (AFP/PNP) Housing Program, Section 5.4 of Memorandum Circulars (MCs) 2518 and 2518-A for Informal Settler Families (ISFs) Living in Danger Areas, and Sections 2.1 and 2.3, Article II of the tripartite MOA [memorandum of agreement],” CoA said.
An ILA serves as the identified beneficiaries’ commitment to pay the NHA in return for financing the acquisition of house and lot packages.
The audit agency said as of December 31, 2017, the total recorded loan receivables subsidized by NHA amounted to P4.6 billion for 20 housing projects for the AFP, PNP and Informal Settler Families (ISFs). However, 51 percent of the amount were not supported by ILA.
State auditors recommended that developers be required to strictly comply with the requirement on the submission of ILA.
The audit report said the police and military were given until June 30, 2017 to submit the revised list of the names of the beneficiaries. However, the list had not yet been finalized by the Housing Board as of February 2018.
The same audit report also showed that the technical and financial capacity of developers to undertake 28 projects costing P10.62 billion was not adequately evaluated.
“Verification of the documents of selected developers who were awarded the contracts for the provision of house and lot packages for various housing projects showed that the developers are not technically and financially capable to undertake the housing projects. These are manifested by the deficiencies in the documents submitted and non-compliance to some requirements by the Developers on the evaluation of the financial capacity as follows,” CoA said.
It cited a number of irregularities, including non-disclosure of contract cost and client/owner on the list of ongoing projects, awarding projects to certain developers that exceeded their license, and non-evaluation of developers financial capacity.
“Hence, there are no basis for the assessment of the financial capacity of the Developer to undertake individual or multiple housing projects that involve substantial amounts for the same contract period to a single Developer,” auditors said.
“The inadequate evaluation of the Developers’ capacity to undertake the project were later on manifested in the delayed completion of the housing projects,” they added.