Legislators on Tuesday, August 1 expressed their disappointment on the huge amount of public funds the Philippine government is losing due to loan-funded projects that have until now remain unfinished.
Former President and current Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo attends the Congressional Oversight Committee on the Official Development Assistance's (COCODA) inquiry on the compliance of the provisions under Republic Act No. 8182 or the Official Development Assistance (ODA) Act held at the Senate on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023.

Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, co-chairman of the Congressional Oversight Committee on the Official Development Assistance (ODA), lamented that the government is losing around P96-billion annually due to yet-to-be completed ODA projects. “Gain for the lender, but loss for the borrower. Just on forex (foreign exchange), just on depreciation alone, we have yet to add additional P96-billion. And this excludes the delay, because with the delay, you have to extend the loan. You have to extend the tenure of the loan,” Gatchalian noted during the hearing of the oversight committee into the government’s spending performance of its loans and grants. “Seems to me that we have already lost P96-billion because of forex,” he added. Marikina Rep. Stella Quimbo also noted the huge additional amount the government has to shoulder due to the forex movement. Quimbo told the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) the government should just consider borrowing domestically. “P96-billion is such a big loss…why don’t we just borrow domestically? For sure, those amounts can be borrowed locally,” according to Quimbo. For his part, Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III said the government should be more circumspect in spending borrowed funds. “Pumasok tayo sa ganitong kontrata, hindi umaandar, bayad lang tayo nang baayd. Parang money grows on trees. Tuwang tuwa tayong magtapon ng pera e (We enter into a specific contract, but there’s no movement, we just pay for it. It's like money grows on trees. We are so happy to throw money away),” Pimentel lamented. House Deputy Speaker and committee vice chairperson Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo also took note of the many delays of ODA-funded projects, which she said, based on her experience as vice president and president, was usually due to lack of funding and or “bureaucratic red tape.” Arroyo cited the case of the overly-delayed implementation of the Bureau of Customs (BOC) Modernization project which, according to NEDA, was embroiled in a “merging” legal issue by the project’s winning bidder. Arroyo said she believes some of the reasons why projects were delayed is that they were not even allocated in the General Appropriations Act (GAA),  and due to the bureaucratic delays in preparing the documents required for disbursements. Pimentel also said aired his disappointment over the delays in the Department of Agrarian Reform’s (DAR) Support to Parcelization of Lands for Individual Titling (SPLIT) Project, which was funded through a loan from the World Bank. “I'm disappointed to see the SPLIT Project in the list of delayed projects, when it's a flagship project of the DAR,” Pimentel said in mixed English and Filipino. Pimentel warned the delay could affect the implementation of the recently-enacted Republic Act No. 11953, or the New Agrarian Emancipation Act, which would condone some P57.6-billion of debt resulting from the award of lands to agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs).