More DAP surprises Written by Tribune Editorial Monday, 21 July 2014 00:00 font size Print Be the first to comment! In the field of business, full disclosure is required on all publicly-listed companies and failure to do this means the suspension of the trading of their shares at the stock market. The administration of Noynoy, if it would have been a bourse participant would have been likely delisted by now due to its failure to come clean on the details of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP). The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and the Palace has been coming out with piecemeal information on the DAP, apparently based on political expediency. The funding that went into the DAP, for instance, is an ever shifting target. Initially, the DBM quoted P136.75 billion as DAP, during the oral arguments, the amount given was P142.23 billion while in the recent supposed complete list of DAP projects, the figure was P144.4 billion. Independent estimates had placed P350 billion in juggled funds infused into the DAP from 2011 to 2013. The details in the recent DBM list of DAP projects was also sorely lacking and merely stated the supposed amounts on which projects that the public can’t even verify since it is a mere table that contains the claims of the Palace. The details are being supplied apparently unintentionally among agencies who are issuing their own defenses on having used DAP money. One example was the Department of Agrarian Reform’s (DAR) denial on the P5.4 billion from the DAP as an extra allocation for the compensation of landowners including the Hacienda Luisita of the relatives of Noynoy. In the DBM list under project 24 of the DAP it was stated under the item DAR: Landowners Compensation that “5.46B indicated in the memo to the President but only indicated as cash release that is not included in the 72.110B proposed funding” which to anybody who reads it is gobbledygook similar to an encrypted message. In the DAR denial, Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes said the amount indicated for landowners compensation in the list of DAP-Identified Projects was “included only because it was part of the disbursement strategy; it only required the release of notice of cash allocation (NCA) and not an additional funding for landowners compensation, which already has an appropriation for fiscal years 2010 and 2011. Sifting through the bureaucratic greek of the secretary, it was an admission that the P5.6 billion was disbursed from the DAP. His defense, however, was that in 2010 and 2011, Congress appropriated a budget of P3.966 billion for each of the years for landowners compensation without the necessary funds being immediately released to the state-owned Landbank. De los Reyes then claimed a Supreme Court decision on the case of Apo Fruits Corp. and Hijo Plantation Inc. vs Land Bank of the Philippines in April 2011 ordered the Landbank to pay Apo-Hijo not only the actual valuation for land DAR acquired for distribution but also a penalty interest between 1996 until 2008 which depleted the available cash in the state bank. In October 2011, an NCA in the amount of P7.932 billion corresponding to appropriations in the General Appropriations Act of both 2010 and 2011 was released to the Landbank and part of this amount, or P5.4 billion, was through the DAP. The admission was significant since part of the amount or P471.5 million was DAR’s compensation to the Hacienda Luisita Inc. (HLI) consisting of P304.03 million as the actual cost of land and an additional P167.47 million in interest. The amount was based on an overprice of P100,000 per hectare on the HLI land value compared to the actual Supreme Court decision that would have arrived at an amount of P40,000 per hectare. In its final ruling, the high court maintained that the date of reckoning for land valuation in Hacienda Luisita shall be November 21, 1989, the same date that the stock distribution option (SDO) in Hacienda Luisita was approved. The SDO is one of the non-land transfer schemes allowed under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program which was meant to evade actual distribution of the land. The Cojuangco-Aquinos during the administration of the late President Corazon Aquino, the incumbent’s mother, gave farm workers shares of stocks instead of land under the scheme. Thus, the DAR admission that the DAP funded the compensation of landowners and that a big chunk went to the family of Noynoy. That much is clear. Many more surprises are expected to jump out of the DAP which is becoming clear as a personal money machine of Noynoy.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 17:23:15 +0000
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