Bicol Party-list Rep. Zaldy Co (left), Vice President Sara Duterte (Facebook)

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has told the House Committee on Appropriations that the 2022 release of contingent funds by the Office of the President (OP) to the Office of the Vice President (OVP)--including the P125 million in confidential funds--was above board. 

In a statement Thursday, Sept. 14, appropriations panel chairman Ako Bicol Party-list Rep. Zaldy Co shared details of a letter from Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Amenah Pangandaman that gave context to the release of funds. 

More importantly, Co said the DBM assured the House that the legislative chamber's cherished power of the purse--or power to allocate funds in the national budget--wasn't subverted by the procedure. 

In the letter, Pangandaman said the P125 million released to the OVP by the OP came from the P7 billion earmarked as contingent funds for 2022, and was "intended to support the OVP’s good governance engagements and social services projects". 

"The amount of P125 million is the larger part of the total P221.42 million released to the OVP and sourced from the contigent fund under last year’s General Appropriations Act (GAA) approved by Congress," read Co's statement. The GAA refers to the national budget. 

The OVP had liquidated the P125 million as "confidential funds".

Pangandaman said the release of funds to Vice President Sara Duterte’s office “was not an augmentation or transfer of funds from the Office of the President,” an action declared in 2014 as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court (SC), since it constitutes post-enactment changes to the budget and thus oversteps the House's power of the purse. 

The 2014 SC ruling was penned by then-Justice Lucas Bersamin, now executive secretary, over the Araullo versus Aquino case. 

“While it is understandable that, at the outset, the release of funds to the OVP may be perceived as a transfer, the same was not technically so, for such release was funded from contigent fund under the FY (fiscal year) 2022 GAA and not from the budget of the OP,” Pangandaman said in her letter to Co. 

The budget chief also noted that the use of contingent fund isn’t limited to a particular agency or office and only prohibits its use for the purchase of motor vehicles. 

She said that, by nature, contingent funds are intended to be used for expenditures not anticipated during the preparation of the budget. 

Vice President Duterte has been under fire from some sectors, particularly the Makabayan bloc solons, for allegedly spending P125 million in "unauthorized" confidential funds in 19 days last year.

Co's office has yet to release a copy of the DBM letter to House reporters as of this posting.