Commission on Higher Education (CHED) chief J. Prospero de Vera III on Thursday said the commission disbursed the remaining PHP20.3 billion budget for free college education (FCE) with “utmost compliance” with government rules and regulations.
The 2018 Commission on Audit (COA) annual audit report recently showed the CHED was unable to spend funds due to delays in the approval of guidelines for the law, non-submission of billing statements of state universities and colleges (SUCs) and local universities and colleges (LUCs), delays in the release of the Tertiary Education Subsidy (TES), and in the implementation of the Student Loan Program (SLP).
“The alleged ‘underspending and ‘low absorptive capacity of CHED is the result of budgeting and audit practices that has been affecting CHED operations for the past years,” de Vera said.
One of the major factors that led to the delayed use of the fund is the unsynchronized academic year (AY) and fiscal year (FY), de Vera said.
“While the General Appropriations Act (GAA) allocates funds on FY basis (January-December), these funds are reimbursed to universities and students on an AY basis (June-May and August-July). These include funds for the reimbursement of tuition and miscellaneous fees, research projects, and scholarships,” he added.
Citing that Republic Act 10931 requires SUCs and LUCs to claim the reimbursement of their tuition and miscellaneous fees from CHED with supporting documents, de Vera said the commission cannot download these funds directly to them if there are no claims.
“CHED has addressed this problem by enjoining SUCs/LUCs to shift their academic calendar from August-July starting year 2020 so that the FY and AY will be synchronized and reimbursement claims can be processed on a FY basis. To date, more than 100 SUCs have shifted their academic calendar to AY 2019-2020 or by AY 2020-2021,” he said.
De Vera reported that about 91 percent of the PHP16 billion intended for the free higher education program amounting to PHP14,397,137,694.41 had been paid for Academic Year 2018-2019 to the 112 SUCs and 78 CHED-recognized LUCs.
“The remaining balance of PHP1,602,852,305.59 will be utilized for the pending claims and billings being processed for Summer billings of AY 2018-2019 as well as other charges that were not included in their first billings,” he added.
With regard to the SLP implementation, de Vera said the commission has long stopped its implementation because of its low repayment rates at less than 10 percent since the 1990s.
“CHED has the responsibility to safeguard the use of public funds and to make sure that the loan program does not become a dole out program. The SLP will start with short term loans and will expand to long term loans with the help of government financial institutions and private and public universities,” he added.
De Vera said the TES for 300,000 student-beneficiaries was implemented on time in SUCs and LUCs but was “slow in private higher education institutions due to more than 1,000 participating private higher education institutions (HEIs) nationwide submitting their students' names to CHED-UNIFAST.
“More than 1.5 million names were received for selection and verification to qualify for the 300,000 TES slots. For AY 2019-2020, CHED has tapped the service of Private Education Assistance Committee (PEAC) to handle the TES in private HEIs and expects that this problem will be solved starting AY 2019-2020,” he added.
PEAC handles the voucher system of the Department of Education (DepEd) and has the expertise needed to implement the TES in private HEIs.
Citing that the situation is an “inherited problem” from the previous leadership, de Vera stressed that the commission is working with COA to address fund releases to SUCs and private HEIs which remained unliquidated for the past years.
“We have addressed it by adopting a policy that universities cannot avail new CHED funding until all their previous projects are completed and funds have been appropriately liquidated,” he said.
“RA 10931 is a landmark social legislation that has no historical precedent. Hence, its initial implementation has been very challenging given the need to have transparency, accountability, and access and equity. There is also a need to ensure that public funds are accounted for and given only to the target beneficiaries,” he added.
De Vera assured the public that such problems would not happen again in its second year of implementation as the commission institutes reforms, adding that the COA audit only noted slow implementation and not corruption, loss or misuse of public funds. (Ma. Teresa Montemayor/PNA)
