The city government is trying to remedy the implementation of some seventy-eight small projects to ensure the city’s compliance to certain guidelines of the coveted Seal of Good Local Governance (SGLG) probably by next year.
During last Monday’s executive-legislative meeting, members of the executive department committed to furnish the local legislators a copy of the list of the unimplemented projects for them to deliberate on the best option done to ensure the implementation of these funded projects to increase the city government’s compliance in the utilization of the earmarked development funds.
City Engineer Edgar Victorio Olpindo reported these projects, costing from P80,000 to P500,000, have been identified by city councilors and included in the city’s annual investment plans for 2020, 2021 and 2022.
However, there were no contractors who were interested to bid for the said projects as they were deemed not feasible even if the Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) and the implementing departments clustered some projects to increase the project amount.
City legislators are expected to deliberate on how to implement these priority projects from the barangays to ensure the timely utilization of the earmarked funds to improve the city government’s performance in the utilization of the annual development funds included in the annual budget.
One of the options being considered by the local legislators discussed during the executive-legislative meeting is the realignment of the funds to bankroll projects that have an impact on the barangays and to forego the small ones to attract contractors that will implement the projects.
The city’s legislative body is expected to issue its recommendation on these unimplemented projects after their regular session on May 30, 2022 to guide BAC members on their future actions to ensure the immediate utilization of designated project funds.
Further, the body is also expected to adopt a policy to forego the allocation of funds for small projects to avoid this kind of problem in the future by pegging a possible limit on the cost for the projects funded from the city’s development fund.
Under the pertinent provisions of Republic Act (RA) 7160 or the Local Government Code of the Philippines, local governments are mandated to allocate some 20 percent of their annual budget for their local development fund for priority projects pursuant to existing guidelines aside from the fact that the projects that will be funded should be part of their respective annual investment plans.
The annual investment plan is a shopping list of projects from the barangays that require funding for their implementation.
