Senator Ralph Recto on Thursday asked the Office of the Ombudsman to also go after public officials who still haven't returned some P4.75 billion in disallowed expenses incurred in 2008, stressing that these “disallowances" are worse than unliquidated cash advances.
"I would like to politely remind the Ombudsman to level up their campaign by also running after these public officials," said Recto, head of the Senate committee on ways and means.
The senator issued the statement after the Office of the Ombudsman asked nine government agencies to withhold the salaries of their respective officers and employees who have yet to liquidate cash advances totaling about P2.4 billion.
Recto, however, said that the Ombudsman's focus should be on the recovery of P4.75 billion in disallowed expenditures by various government agencies as reported by the Commission on Audit.
He explained that disallowed expenditures or a "disallowances" are worse than unliquidated cash advances because the former is clearly illegal spending that must be reimbursed to the government.
Unliquidated expenses, on the other hand, are advances whose proof of spending has yet to be reported or backed up by receipts, he said.
"In the case of unliquidated advances, there could just be delay in settlement. But in the case of an audit disallowance, there is a finality of finding that funds involved have been spent irregularly and thus must be returned," he said.
Meanwhile, Recto also revealed that the government's "other outstanding receivables" have ballooned to P24.1 billion in 2008 from P20.4 billion in 2007.
He said the bulk of these receivables, about P20.83 billion, are collections made by the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs, which the accredited collecting banks failed to remit to the national coffers by end of 2008.
"The impact of such possible inflow of funds to a new government scouring for fresh revenues may help divert its attention from ultimately VAT-ing the toll roads," Recto said.—Kimberly Jane T. Tan/JV,
