Clause that caused late publication of COA reports is still in 2025 budget law

The provision that caused the late publication of the Commission on Audit’s (COA) annual audit reports (AAR) still found its way into the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA), this year’s budget law.

Section 100 of the new budget law, signed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at the end of December, states that all agencies, within 60 days from their receipt the COA Annual Audit Report (AAR), shall submit to the auditing body a status report on the actions they’ve taken on the COA’s audit observations and recommendations.

This very same provision was present in the last two GAA, 2023 and 2024, under section 99 and 94, respectively. When pressed by lawmakers during the budget deliberations for 2025, the very same clause was used by COA as justification for the late publication of the 2023 AARs in 2024.

The timeline was a bit tricky because audit reports are already published a year late, so when the House of Representatives was deliberating on the COA’s budget for 2025, their questions touched on the audit reports that concerned the 2023 fiscal year, which were meant to be published by 2024. In other words, the latest audit reports that lawmakers were looking at were very delayed.

In explaining this delay in the publication of the 2023 AARs, COA Assistant Commissioner Alexander Juliano said in August 2024 that they needed to validate the actions taken by the agencies, as required by the specific GAA provision. Because of the said provision, the publication of the bulk of 2023 AARs only took place in December 2024 — almost year-end.

Usually, AARs are uploaded by as early as June of each year.

The inclusion of the said provision in the 2025 GAA could mean that a delay is again foreseeable in the publication of 2025 AARs in 2026. The same thing could happen in the publication of the 2024 AARs this year, 2025.

There’s a caveat, though, because the said provision was also present in the 2022 GAA, but COA still began uploading its AARs in June 2023. The delay only happened in 2024.

Why this matters

A delay means diminished ability on the part of the public to check how government agencies spent the budget allocated to them for a specific year. Because the reports provide important details on the use of the budget, including red flags in transactions, they afford a degree of transparency.

AARs that are usually published mid-year in time for budget deliberations in the latter part of the year provide lawmakers and the public sufficient guidance in assessing a new proposed budget. Lawmakers are armed with information on whether a specific agency misspent or efficiently used its previously allocated budget, thus having solid basis to approve or disapprove a new one.

Budget and transparency experts, like former finance undersecretary Cielo Magno and Zy-za Suzara, had separately told Rappler earlier that the said GAA provision “doesn’t signal credibility and trustworthiness.”

The experts added that the additional 60 days given to agencies to report to COA actions they’ve taken on audit observations and recommendations should not be celebrated. The usual time given to them should be enough to prepare the necessary documents and attachments, as this had been the usual practice even before the GAA provision, experts said.

Who gains from this inordinate delay? – Rappler.com