COA’s proposed 2024 budget easily hurdles Senate panel

The Senate finance committee on Wednesday swiftly approved the proposed P13.360-billion budget of the Commission on Audit (COA) for fiscal year 2024.

The panel only discussed the proposed spending plan in about six minutes after no senators posed questions against the state audit agency’s budget.

Senator Sonny Angara, chairperson of the panel, said the proposed budget was already deemed approved at the committee level and considered endorsed for plenary deliberations. 

Under the 1987 Constitution, COA is mandated to examine, audit, and settle all accounts pertaining to the revenue and receipts of, and expenditures or uses of funds and property, owned or held in trust by, or pertaining to, the Government, or any of its subdivisions, agencies, or instrumentalities, including government-owned or controlled corporations with original charters, and on a post-audit basis.

The agencies that are subject to COA’s auditing include constitutional bodies, commissions and offices that have been granted fiscal autonomy under the Constitution; autonomous state colleges and universities; other government-owned or controlled corporations and their subsidiaries; and such non-governmental entities receiving subsidy or equity, directly or indirectly, from or through the Government, which are required by law or the granting institution to submit to such audit as a condition of subsidy or equity. 

During the deliberations of the House appropriations committee regarding  COA’s budget, the constitutional commission was asked about the possibility of amending a  2015 joint circular governing the use and auditing of confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) as well as the possible conduct of a fraud audit on the provincial government of Cagayan in connection with its supposed illegal expenses during the 2022 campaign period. — RSJ, GMA Integrated News