MANILA, Philippines – The Commission on Audit (COA) said that Baguio City only used 8% – or only P79.96 million – out of its P1.023 billion in available funding for development projects for 2022.

The state auditors said Baguio City only “fully implemented” 96 programs, projects, and activities (PPAs) out of 539, with another 96 listed as “partially implemented” and the remaining 347 “not implemented.”

This was contained in COAs 211-page audit report, received by the office of Mayor Benjamin Magalong on May 25, 2023.

“Development Projects prioritized by the City Government amounting to P943.46 million under the 20 percent Development Fund were not completed and/or implemented as of December 31, 2022, thus, socioeconomic and environmental services were short of delivery,” COA said.

COA added that fully implemented PPAs were valued at P79.96 million; partially implemented PPAs were at P353.98 million, and unimplemented PPAs were at P589.48 million.

“This translates to a measly 18% of the 539 PPAs prioritized by management. In terms of fund utilization, the amount utilized equates to only eight percent of the P1,023,419,961.09 total available fund for implementation in the current year,” the auditors added.

State auditors flagged the underutilization since the projects and programs were time-bound. This would also affect delivery of services to Baguio residents.

“The non-implementation and non-completion of the various development programs, projects, and activities on time, impedes the delivery of basic services, may render the programs irrelevant, and would pile up the workload of implementing offices,” COA said.

In response, the local government of Baguio City assured auditors that stricter monitoring of project timetables would be enforced to ensure socioeconomic services could be delivered in a timely manner.

In 2021, COA also flagged Baguio City for a failure to utilize P438.75 million in fund releases from the Department of Information and Communications Technology for an unspecified IT project and another P50 million from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation.