THE International Budget Partnership (IBP) has praised the Commission on Audit for its work on safeguarding public funds despite being handicapped by restrictions and health risks during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The IBP, an international organization dedicated to ensuring governments remain responsible stewards of public funds, said there were only a few national audit agencies that were able to conduct real-time audit of COVID-19 funds when the pandemic started last year but COA was one of the exceptions.
It hosted an online global discussion on “Managing COVID Funds: A Global Scorecard of Accountability” last May 24.
The IBP noted that as of end 2020, at least $14 trillion had been spent globally to address the financial impact of the pandemic through additional spending measures, tax relief programs, and loans and loan guarantees.
IBP’s report said two-thirds of countries failed to provide enough information on the relief packages that they introduced, creating problems on transparency, even as almost half bypassed their legislatures.
It said the scale and complexity of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic have challenged governments’ capacity to manage their resources effectively.
COA chairperson Michael Aguinaldo said the Philippines’ familiarity with emergency situations, such as typhoons and earthquakes, has created an awareness that the best way to deal with a crisis is to anticipate how the government is going to respond.
“Because we are able to anticipate, we were able to follow the money trail right away. As far as doing risk-based audit, we anticipate where the money is going to flow, what’s going to be done, what do we need to prepare for this. Also, one of the key things that we did early on was to come up with guidelines on how to audit COVID fund expenditures,” he said.
Aguinaldo likewise acknowledged the willingness of government authorities to cooperate, making the COA’s job easier.
“There were some actions on the part of the government that created transparency. The government required periodic weekly reporting of funds and these were published,” he said.
Joining Aguinaldo in the panel were Nazir Kabiri, deputy minister for policy in Afghanistan; Carolina Renteria, chief of the Planning and Finance Management Division of the International Monetary Fund’s Fiscal Affairs Department; and Shumani Luruli, program coordinator for Plan Act, a civil society organization based in South Africa.
Sofia Sprechmann Sineiro, secretary general of CARE International and a board member of the IBP, was the moderator.
Aguinaldo said civil society organizations have been a big help to the commission in monitoring the amount of money disbursed on a weekly basis.
He said civil society initiating is one way to be more transparent and accountable.
Still, he offered that audit should not be looked at in isolation as it is only a part of the fiscal process of the country given the fact that the COA only has a limited degree of punitive powers.
“A lot of change has to come from the process itself. Our reports should be used by Congress whenever they have deliberations on the budget so that money that is not spent or not spent properly should be taken away from the budget of agencies that are not able to utilize,” Aguinaldo said.
