AS IF SQUANDERING hundreds of millions isn’t enough, the Office of the Vice President is taking centerstage anew – this time for “spurious” beneficiaries under its Mag Negosyo ‘Ta Day (MTD) livelihood program.
According to the Commission on Audit (COA), not one of the 128 individuals and 10 non-government organizations (NGOs) selected by the OVP for inclusion as beneficiaries in its MTD livelihood program underwent the required assessment of the proposed business enterprise.
The assessment is a mechanism which validates whether or not a livelihood proposal would survive or otherwise.
In the 2024 audit of the OVP released today (December 1), state auditors noted that the lack of feasibility and economic viability assessment by the Department Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation (PDIC) was a violation of the rules that the OVP itself imposed.
Under the MTD Manual of Operations all beneficiaries, whether an individual or an NGO, are required to submit their proposals for evaluation on feasibility and viability.
Item B, Section 7 (a) of the same Manual made it mandatory that the beneficiary “shall complete capacity building/training on financial literacy, skills training and other related developmental activities provided by the DTI and PDIC.”
After such training, the beneficiary is supposed to submit the project proposal within five working days.
“The feasibility and economic viability of the project proposals of the 138 beneficiaries both individuals and NGOs/CSOs (civil society organizations) were not reviewed by the PDIC and DTI due to the absence of any evaluation or assessment report,” the audit team said.
Neither could the DTI or PDIC simply step in as it was learned that the OVP did not prepare a written agreement that would delineate the responsibility of the two agencies in reviewing the project proposals.
The feasibility and viability assessment was intended to ensure that public funds that the OVP will distribute to the selected beneficiary will help them start a business and that the money will not simply go to waste.
Under the Mag Negosyo ‘Ta Day program, each chosen individual beneficiary will receive P15,000 in cash assistance.
For group beneficiaries, P100,000 will be given if the organization has 20 members or less; P150,000 for those with 21 to 100 members; and P200,000 for those with more than 100 members.
Recommendation for approval was entrusted to the OVP Director of Operations while the final approval was made discretionary to the OVP Chief of Staff or, in his/her absence, a designated assistant chief of staff.
However, aside from zero viability and feasibility assessments, auditors found that after releasing the money, the OVP visited only 11 out of 73 individuals and 10 NGOs funded to check the status of their investments or micro-enterprise.
Again, under OVP’s own Manual for Operations for the MTD program, it was a compulsory requirement for the Satellite Office (SO) or Special Projects Division (SPD) to do a home visit three months after the release of funds.
“Review of the post activity reports …disclosed that only 11 out of the 183 samples of beneficiaries who implemented the MTD program were visited for monitoring three months upon the release of funds. In order to evaluate and ensure that the seed capital is used for micro-enterprise development, monitoring and evaluation activities should be regularly conducted and properly documented,” COA stated.
In the absence of such monitoring, the COA pointed out that the OVP may not be able to determine if the cash releases actually helped to improve the lives of its chosen beneficiaries.
In its reply to the audit observation, the OVP simply excluded the requirement for a DTI and PDIC assessment and transferred the said function to its own staff.
It informed the COA that the evaluation for feasibility and viability will now go through a “Project Assessment Tool” it created to take the place of DTI and PDIC.
