The Department of Finance (DOF) assured the public that using the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation's (PhilHealth) sleeping funds for the government's priority programs and projects would do no harm to its members and plans to expand its benefit packages this year.
DOF Director Euvimil Nina Asuncion said during the Bagong Pilipinas Ngayon briefing on Thursday that the sleeping funds came from government subsidies, not member contributions.
"We saw that the unused funds in PhilHealth are around P9.9 billion. We want to make it clear that this comes from the national government's subsidy and we will not take funds from the members' contributions," DOF Director Euvimil Nina Asuncion said during the Bagong Pilipinas Ngayon briefing on Thursday.
"Those of us who are paying for PhilHealth, we will not be affected because that's it; these are funds that are subsidies from the government," she added.
Asuncion clarified that even if the P89.9 billion unused government subsidies are transferred to the National Treasury, PhilHealth still has around P550 billion in its coffers. This is more than enough to increase the benefits of its direct and indirect contributors, covering two to three years of expenses.
She also clarified that of the P89.9 billion, P20 billion, initially remitted to the National Treasury, was used to pay the health workers' allowance.
Another P10 billion, meanwhile, was transferred to the Treasury on Wednesday.
Asuncion said PhilHealth asked to remit the P89.9 billion in tranches.
According to Asuncion, the unused government subsidies will also fund the P40 billion needed for the salary increases of government workers.
She said these will also support the government's foreign-assisted projects, projects to combat malnutrition, technical and vocational skills development, the Philippine Rural Development Program for the agriculture sector, projects to provide clean water to rural areas, and flood control and river basin projects.
Asuncion noted that the DOF's move to sweep idle funds of government-owned and controlled corporations is in line with Congress' order under the General Appropriations Act (GAA) of 2024 to fund the Unprogrammed Appropriations.
"The provision under the General Appropriations Act is that it says, let's see if our GOCCs have unused funds, and if they have unused funds, let's return it to our general fund and spend it on programs and projects that are also listed in the General Appropriations Act," she said.
The DOF's cost-benefit analysis showed that the projects funded under the Unprogrammed Appropriations would increase real gross domestic product (GDP) growth by 0.7%, increase revenues by an additional P23-24.4 billion, and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
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