THE Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday denied receiving any fund under the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), noting that it turned down an offer from Malacañang to provide P100 million of pooled savings early this year.
The tribunal issued a resolution on March 5, 2013 approving the transfer of a P100-million budget that was included in the Department of Justice-Justice System Infrastructure Program (DOJ-JUSIP) for the construction of the Malabon Hall of Justice but it was not acted upon by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).
On December 23, 2013, Justice Presbitero Velasco ordered the withdrawal of the request.
But on January 10, 2014, Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad informed the High Court that its request for extension of the validity of the P100-million appropriation for another year has been denied.
He, however, told the court of the availability of a portion of the pooled savings to augment the judiciary’s capital outlay.
Abad said the fund has been processed for release to the judiciary.
But the SC rejected the offer upon Velasco’s recommendation.
President Benigno Aquino 3rd on Wednesday accused the High Court of transferring funds to the DOJ similar to what was done under the DAP, which the tribunal said was illegal.
In its July 1 DAP ruling, the tribunal ruled that apart from barring cross-border transfer of funds from one branch of government to another, the Constitution also prohibits the “withdrawal of unobligated allotments from the implementing agencies, and the declaration of the withdrawn unobligated allotments and unreleased appropriations as savings prior to the end of the fiscal year and without complying with the statutory definition of savings contained in the General Appropriations Acts.”