The Department of Education (DepEd) on Saturday, Oct. 31, maintained that it remains “dedicated” to efficiently utilize its budget, in accordance with its mandate of delivering quality, equitable, culture-based, and complete basic education.
“Since the start of our administration, we have introduced and implemented several financial management interventions, including decreasing the amount of unliquidated cash advance (UCA) over the years, to assist the Central Office and our field units in this mission,” DepEd said in a statement.
This intervention, DepEd added, has been “proven successful” as the agency secured a 29.78 percent decrease of UCA from P2,737,798,732.74 in 2018 to P1,922,340,516.26 in 2019.
“We would like to also note that this is the accumulated total of UCA of the entire operating units of the Department, which is close to 62,000 offices and schools,” DepEd said.
DepEd noted that the “success of minimizing the accumulation of UCAs” was associated with allowing non-implementing units/schools to maintain their own set of bank accounts, such that fund releases to them are no longer treated as cash advance.
“This measure was introduced since a big portion of the UCA covers fund releases to the schools that still do not maintain its own set of books of accounts,” DepEd said. “All elementary schools and some secondary schools are what we refer to as Non-Implementing Unit schools these schools still have no finance staff on their plantilla; thus all fund transfers to them are recorded as cash advance,” the agency added.
It added that the “strict monitoring of UCA by DepEd heads of offices” is also another factor since the “no-liquidation, no next cash advance policy” continues to be strictly implemented.
This policy, DepEd said, was applied since “some SDOs were not able to meet the cut-off” date of Dec. 31, 2019, while some have issues with complying with the documentary requirements.
“We also would like to clarify that these recorded unliquidated cash advances were supported by evaluated and validated liquidation reports,” DepEd said. “We hope to continue these interventions in our finances, in the spirit of transparency, accountability, and efficient public service,” it added.
The Commission on Audit (COA) earlier called out the DepEd Central and Regional Offices for accumulating over P1.922 billion in UCA in 2019.