Duterte’s administration had by Dec 30 announced 14 billion pesos (US$273 million) in funds for relief and recovery in affected areas.
Two billion pesos came from the calamity fund and a similar amount from an executive contingent fund. On Dec 29, Duterte announced 4 billion pesos in aid to 800,000 beneficiaries, and the following day he approved the 2022 national budget, from which 6 billion pesos will be sourced.
But political opponents, including Carlos Zarate, the deputy minority leader in Congress, have accused him of underspending and delaying the delivery of resources.
Zarate pointed out that both calamity and contingent funds contain more than double the amount allotted for the typhoon victims, and that there was an additional 16 billion pesos of unused calamity funds from previous fiscal years.
“Has the government burned through billions of pesos in the last three weeks? Why is it scrimping on our countrymen, now gravely hit by Rai?” said Zarate.
Duterte earlier said that funnelling resources to typhoon victims is difficult because reserves had been “depleted” by the pandemic response.
Sonny Africa, executive director of the independent think tank the Ibon Foundation, told Nikkei Asia that loans and grants received by the country to address the pandemic are far from depleted.
An Ibon Foundation tally shows that around US$11.1 billion in COVID-19-related disbursements were made in 2020 and 2021. It also analysed data from the Department of Finance and found reserves in loans and grants for the pandemic amounted to US$22.5 billion as of September 2021.
“Taking the DOF’s claims of Covid-19 financing at face value, then apparently barely half has been spent. There is also considerable fiscal space opened up, with 150 billion pesos in further revenues and 110 billion pesos less in spending in 2021 than targeted, according to the Development Budget Coordinating Committee. These can be used for typhoon Rai and even for the Covid-19 response,” Africa said.
But Sen Christopher “Bong” Go, an ally of Duterte, said the president has been working “nonstop”.
“We’re on this. We don’t need to celebrate the holidays, we can just pray instead. We will prioritise services to our fellow Filipinos,” Go said.
James Galas, spokesperson for Tulong Kabataan (Youth Aid), a national network of responders to natural disasters, labelled the government’s efforts “snail paced”.
“We knew that the typhoon was coming. Amid an economic crisis, the government is still delaying the recovery of affected areas. Duterte is at fault. He can act like a hero now, but it was his administration that slashed the calamity fund when he came to power,” said Galas.
By 2021, the calamity fund dropped to US$391 million from US$743 million in 2016, the year Duterte came to power.
“The response is slow because the government hasn’t invested in the machinery and logistics to react quickly to calamities across many islands,” Africa said. “But it is also stingy from misplaced fiscal prudence.”
The government spent considerably more on areas struck in 2013 by Haiyan, the most destructive storm on record. According to the Department of Budget and Management, the state had released US$1.3 billion by 2018 for rehabilitation from that super typhoon.