A portion of the P60 billion transferred from the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. to the National Treasury was directed toward settling long-overdue pandemic benefits for workers, according to Executive Secretary Ralph Recto.
Speaking on On Point on Bilyonaryo News Channel in an interview with Pinky Webb, Recto addressed questions on how the transferred funds were spent, noting that a significant share went to allowances owed to personnel who served during the COVID-19 crisis. “We wanted to have health to health lahat. Apparently, possibly hindi napunta health to health. But a big portion of that was used to pay the public health emergency benefits and allowances for health care and non-healthcare workers during COVID-19,” he said.
Recto specified that around P28 billion from the PhilHealth transfer was allocated to cover these unpaid benefits. He added that the government has already released more than P120 billion in total—drawing from both programmed and unprogrammed sources—to address commitments that had remained unsettled since the pandemic. “Ito yung mga pinangakuan natin to pay them during the pandemic na hindi nabayaran. So under our administration, we paid them from programmed and unprogrammed,” he said.
The former finance chief also outlined the limits of the Department of Finance’s authority during his previous post, stressing that its responsibility centered on revenue generation and fiscal management rather than spending decisions. “Our job is to raise the revenue, manage our debt…, determine the deficit target. So revenue kami. Ang public works ang nagde-determine kung anong project ang ipa-fund. And it is the DBM who manages the expenditures,” he said.
Now holding the role of Executive Secretary, Recto said his position allows for wider supervision of government agencies as reforms are rolled out. “That’s why we changed the secretary of the DPWH. I am working closely with Sec. Vince [Dizon] to reform the system in DPWH. Same thing with the DBM—we have a new secretary—and we are all working together to improve government performance, maximize the departments’ outputs, and monitor the performance of the departments, and ensure that the departments follow the instructions of the President,” he said.
