Who should take the heat from the apparent non-usage of some P4.9 billion worth of financial aid that Congress had set aside last year for the Covid-19 pandemic-stricken tourism sector?

That's essentially what former deputy speaker, Camarines Sur 2nd district Rep. LRay Villafuerte wants to know even as he decried the "bungling" of the delivery of the assistance meant for tourism industry stakeholders.

“Agencies in charge of implementing a rescue package for tourism MSMEs (micro, small and medium-size enterprises) have apparently bungled their job of providing succor to this sector...and nurse this industry to a quick and strong recovery from the pandemic,” said Villafuerte, who was the principal author in the House of the "Bayanihan 1" and "Bayanihan 2" laws.

“The Congress should get to the bottom of this COA discovery that almost half the amount intended to rescue tourism MSMEs remained idle Bayanihan 2’s extended effectivity lapsed in June last year, mainly because of SBC (Small Business Corp.)’s supposedly inadequate staff to process loan applications and the hesitancy of potential beneficiaries to secure loans to revive their businesses,” he said.

According to Villafuerte, the situation is "obviously a case of wrong or misguided priorities as tourism and other concerned authorities had lobbied for the funneling of the entire multibillion-peso rescue package for loans to tourism-related MSMEs, rather than devote the amount or a part of it to building tourism service infrastructure—in preparation for the eventual reopening of the domestic economy in general and the tourism industry in particular".

Villafuerte said the House leadership under then-Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano had tucked a P10-billion budget for the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA) in the House-passed version of Bayanihan 2 for the building tourism infrastructure to sharpen the country’s competitiveness as a tourist destination and provide temporary but immediate jobs for many of the displaced workers from this industry.

“Such tourism infrastructure would have been up by now—and ready for the reopening of our economy and tourism industry," the Bicol solon said, adding that such facilities could be built "in six months to a year at the most".

“But sadly, our concerned officials thought otherwise," he said, even as he quoted the COA findings as saying that the P4.9 billion in funds "could have been used to fund other emergency measures to address the effects of the pandemic.”

What made the fund mishandling worse, he said, was that the objection to the original budgetary allocation for TIEZA was rooted in the reported feud between Department of Tourism (DOT) and TIEZA officials, “which meant that the P10-billion budget for tourism infrastructure was simply waylaid by office or bureaucratic politics".

He said the almost P5 billion in unused SBC funds had reverted to the National Treasury as provided by law, and could no longer be used for either MSME loans or tourism infrastructure.

However, Villafuerte said the government could still catch up by augmenting the infrastructure funds of TIEZA in the 2022 national budget and in the proposed 2023 General Appropriations Act (GAA) "to improve and increase our tourism services infrastructure as a way to sharpen the country’s competitive edge as a tourism haven".

"It’s better late than never," he noted.