SC justice questions transfer of PhilHealth funds

Supreme Court (SC) Associate Justice Amy Lazaro-Javier has questioned the government's transfer of unutilized funds of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) to the national treasury to finance projects already fully funded in the 2024 budget, including those not related to health care.

- DAPHNE GALVEZ

Lazaro-Javier raised the questions during the resumption of oral arguments on the controversial P89.9-billion PhilHealth fund transfer to the national treasury to fund unprogrammed appropriations in the 2024 national budget.

Citing the Department of Finance (DOF), she said the funds remitted to the national treasury were meant to fund "urgent" national projects, and among those identified as such were routine maintenance of national roads and the Panay-Guimaras-Negros (PGN) Island bridges project.

However, Lazaro-Javier pointed out that the PGN project already received full funding from the ExportImport Bank of Korea, amounting to P174.49 billion, as well as additional allocations from the 2022 and 2023 national budgets.

In response, Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra, who represented the House of Representatives and the Senate, said Congress factors in whether a project can already be implemented in the given fiscal year.

"If a project that has already been identified and sufficiently funded is considered to be nonimplementable for the given fiscal year, I think it is the decision of Congress in the exercise of its policy or wisdom, so to speak, to move it to the unprogrammed appropriations in the meantime," he explained.