WITHOUT A DOUBT, the Philippine government has tried to match nearly peso for peso the massive amounts of donations that foreign governments, donor agencies, corporate entities, and citizens of the world have raised for the victims of super typhoon Yolanda.
In fact, when the nation marked Yolanda’s first anniversary on Nov. 8, 2014, the government proclaimed that it had released at least PhP52.06 billion for relief, rehabilitation, and reconstruction work for the victims and affected communities.
The government has estimated that it would require PhP167.9 billion to complete the work until 2016. But this does not worry Budget Secretary Florencio ‘Butch’ Abad. At a recent assessment forum on Yolanda, he bad guaranteed that full bill would be made available in the 2015 and 2016 budgets — PhP80.31 billion and PhP38.93 billion, respectively, or a little bit more that the projected expense.
“Money is not a problem,” Abad said. “The problem is the assessment, preparation, execution, and delivery (of aid).”
When PCIJ sat down to unpack and parse the government’s numbers, the big data did seem impressive. The small data, however, tended to belie the government’s claims that public funds have so far been released quickly, efficiently, and for all the right purposes, to the communities ravaged by Yolanda.
Among our findings:
* Beyond the mercy missions — or humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations, with publicity stunts for public officials tucked in between — a big portion of the funds released for Yolanda did not flow as promptly and many projects did not roll out as quickly.
* The government sought and secured from Congress a P14.6-billion supplemental appropriation in January 2014 “for relief and rehabilitation services, and the repair, rehabilitation and reconstruction of permanent structures, including other capital expenditures for disaster operations and rehabilitation activities in areas affected by disasters and calamities, both natural and man-made.” The tone of urgency that marked the request soon shifted to sluggish release of funds. Government’s first billing on the supplemental appropriation came only on March 4, 2014, or three months later. Yet again in December 2014, government sought and secured a second P22.5-billion supplemental appropriation from Congress.
* The bulk or 61 percent of the Budget department’s total releases for disaster relief are listed as having gone to Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses (MOOE), which by nature are difficult to account for; only 39 percent are recorded as having gone to Capital Outlay (CO) projects, which are more concrete and require full project documentation.
* Other than data regarding which line departments received how much, the DBM disbursements trail turns thin and cold. There is hardly sufficient information on the identities of the final beneficiaries (towns, provinces, villages, etc.), or more importantly, the exact location and final deliverables or outcomes of projects.
* DBM documents are couched in sparse and general language that does not reveal useful information about the projects. In fact, at least 11 percent of releases under the supplemental appropriations for Yolanda had no project description. About PhP2.3 billion of the other disaster funds had entries of just “rehabilitation and reconstruction program” as project description.
* Of the first PhP14.6-billion supplemental budget, less than a fourth or just PhP3.39 billion were released for the communities ravaged by Yolanda. The bigger balance of about PhP7.5 billion actually went to all sorts of unnamed communities in the provinces visited by a long parade of typhoons with names few people would still remember – Dante, Emong, Isang, Jolina, Kiko, Labuyo, Vinta, Maring, Quedan, Ramil, Santi, Zoraida, Odette, “previous disasters and aggravated by Typhoon Yolanda,” Habagat, “monsoon rains,” and “flashfloods” in 2013, which received PhP3.761 billion or more than that allotted for Yolanda-affected areas.
* At least six of these so-called “calamities” — tropical storms Carina, Quedan, Ramil, Dante, Emong, and Kiko — neither made landfall nor directly affected the Philippines. Funds have also been provided for episodes of “monsoon rains” and “flashfloods” that are by now usual occurrences most everywhere in the nation.
* Traces of the controversial Disbursement Acceleration Program or DAP – which the Supreme Court ruled in July 2014 to be unconstitutional in part – have crossed over to government’s work on disasters. The last DAP tranche, PhP4.1 billion in all, was released by DBM on Dec. 27, 2013. Interestingly, on that day, Special Allotment Release Orders (SAROs) included over PhP3 billion for “Calamity-Related Rehabilitation Restoration Project and Other Priority Projects” coursed through the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP), Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA), National Dairy Authority (NDA), National Irrigation Authority (NIA), and Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA). The last DAP tranche also included direct assistance worth PhP23.33 million provided to the mostly Liberal Party-affiliated mayors of towns in Eastern Visayas and Northern Luzon.
* The government did not only underspend, it also spent slowly and even, by many accounts, inappropriately and with not so good results. It has authority from Congress to use up to PhP127.6 billion of public money from various special-purpose funds for calamities and disasters in 2013 and 2014. As of November 2014, however, only PhP31.3 billion, or less than a quarter of the disaster monies, had been released by DBM. That amount included a substantial portion for recovery efforts from damage wrought by almost a dozen typhoons and calamities three to four years past.
The third set of stories and relevant data tables from PCIJ’s Disaster Aid: The Money Trail project follow:
* The Government and Yolanda: Too much money, impact too little too late
* A throng of typhoons
* Spinning a good project: Reconstituting civil registry records
For related video, photos, data tables, and documents, check out Disaster Aid: The Money Trail.