A BIG part of the P10-billion Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (ACEF) went to “ghost” borrowers, and the government can no longer recover the billions of pesos given as agricultural loans to non-existing companies, a senator revealed on Thursday.
According to Sen. Franklin Drilon, one-fourth of the ACEF fund, or P2.5 billion, were given to ghost borrowers.
ACEF was a special purpose fund intended to help farmers and cooperatives.
A Commission on Audit (COA) report said that the Department of Agriculture (DA) granted loans to hundreds of companies from 2000 to 2009.
Drilon said that COA could not locate these borrowers, adding that he suspected that business ventures were opened just to get loans from the multi-billion government credit line.
According to him, these companies may have colluded with Agriculture officials in acquiring the loans, which required no collateral.
“The government [was] clearly prejudiced in this case because the amount could not be collected anymore since these [were] clearly ghost borrowers,” said Drilon, chairman of the Senate finance committee.
The audit commission said that letters of confirmation were sent to the borrowers but these “yielded negative results.” Of the 264 confirmation letters sent to the borrowers, 140 did not reply for balances totaling P2.1 billion and 27 with balances of P370 million returned the letters to the agency due to various reasons.
Beneficiaries that borrowed a total of P66.4 million, meanwhile, failed to pay back their loans due to the closure of the companies affected by typhoons and firms that no longer exist.
According to the audit agency, P1 million in loans may not be collected anymore because of death, insufficient address or unknown identity of the borrower.
Sen. Edgardo Angara, meanwhile, challenged the Agriculture department and the Senate Oversight Committee on Agriculture to conduct a full and fair audit of ACEF funds after reports alleged that he was one of those who benefitted from the fund.
“I call for—and welcome—a performance audit of the ACEF. They should publish all the names of the beneficiaries of ACEF, from day one to present, whether individuals, corporations, provinces or universities,” said the former Senate President, a one-time Agriculture secretary.
He added that it would not be difficult to trace where the money went and how it was used.
Angara’s home province of Aurora received P300 million from the ACEF, including P100 million for the Aurora State College of Technology’s (ASCOT) Enhancement of Technology-Based Agribusiness Industry in 2007, and P200 million for the Baler-Casiguran Road in 2008.
According to the senator, the funds allotted for the Aurora projects were channeled to the right beneficiaries and were properly spent.
