Senate panel OKs OVP's P2.385-billion 2024 budget

The Senate Committee on Finance on Monday approved the proposed P2.385 billion budget of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) for fiscal year 2024.

The said total budget includes the controversial P500 million for the OVP's confidential and intelligence funds. 

During the budget deliberations, Vice President Sara Duterte told senators that the OVP is not insisting for any amount, but the office's work would be much easier to accomplish if it will have confidential funds that will guarantee the safe implementation of its projects.

"The OVP can only propose the use of confidential funds based on Joint Circular 2015-01 but we leave it to the decision and discretion of Congress [which] has the power of the purse to decide whether to grant confidential funds to our office," she said.

"We can only propose but we are not insisting. We can live without confidential funds but of course our work will be much easier if we have the flexibility of confidential funds in monitoring the safe, secure, and successful implementations of the programs and projects and activities of the OVP," she added.

She said the confidential funds are needed in monitoring the safe, secure, and successful implementations of the programs and projects and activities of the OVP.

Confidential expenses refer to those related to surveillance activities in civilian government agencies that are intended to support the mandate or operations of the agency.

The Joint Circular No. 2015-01, issued by Commission on Audit (COA) and four other government bodies on January 8, 2015, governs the spending of intelligence and confidential funds, as well as the auditing of expenses under it.

In the same hearing, Duterte also admitted that the OVP had requested confidential funds in August 2022 and received the allocations in December that year.

It was Senate Minority Leader Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III who asked Duterte if it was true that Malacañang charged to its contingent fund and transferred to the OVP P221.4 million.

Of the amount, the OVP liquidated P125 million as confidential funds.

"The amount is correct and that is correct, we requested confidential funds to the Office of the Vice President as early as August 2022 and we were only granted the confidential funds in December 2022," Duterte said.

Pimentel raised a legal issue during the hearing, saying that there was no item in the OVP budget for confidential expenses in 2022

"It’s nothing, it’s zero. It’s not even mentioned in the line budgeting for the OVP and yet at year’s end calendar 2022, we will now have an entry [of] P125 million charged to a line which did not exist at the very beginning," Pimentel said.

Duterte said the Department of Budget and Management would be in a better position to answer Pimentel's legal question.

"We requested it from the Office of the President and it was granted through the Department of Budget and Management. I think the Department of Budget and Management can better answer the question on the transfer of funds from their source to the Office of the Vice President," Duterte said.

Last week, the House of Representatives' Committee on Appropriations quickly ended deliberations on the OVP's budget, with Ilocos Norte Representative Ferdinand Alexander "Sandro" Marcos citing parliamentary courtesy.

At least 21 lawmakers voted in favor of Marcos' motion. However, three members of the Makabayan bloc, led by House Deputy Minority Leader and ACT Teachers party-list Representative France Castro, objected to the motion. — KG/RSJ, GMA Integrated News