THE Department of Education (DepEd) said that its unliquidated cash advances (UCA) have decreased over the years due to several financial management interventions.
The Commission on Audit (COA) earlier called out the DepEd Central and Regional Offices for accumulating over P1.922 billion in UCA in 2019.
In a statement DepEd said it is dedicated to efficiently utilize its budget in accordance with its mandate of delivering quality, equitable, culture-based, and complete basic education.
“Since the start of our administration, we have introduced and implemented several financial management interventions, including decreasing the amount of unliquidated cash advance (UCA) over the years, to assist the Central Office and our field units in this mission.
“This intervention has been proven successful as we secured a 29.78% decrease of UCA from 2018 to 2019. 2018 2019 P2,737,798, 732.74 P1,922,340,516.26.
“We would like to also note that this is the accumulated total of UCA of the entire operating units of the Department, which is close to 62,000 offices and schools”, DepEd said.
Moreover, the department said the success of minimizing the accumulation of UCAs was associated with this measure: Non-implementing units/schools can now maintain their own set of bank accounts, such that fund releases to them are no longer treated as cash advance.
“This measure was introduced since a big portion of the UCA covers fund releases to the schools that still do not maintain its own set of books of accounts. All elementary schools and some secondary schools are what we refer to as Non-Implementing Unit schools. These schools still have no finance staff on their plantilla; thus all fund transfers to them are recorded as cash advance.
It also said the strict monitoring of UCA by DepEd heads of offices. The No-liquidation, no next cash advance policy shall continue to be strictly implemented.
This was applied since some SDOs were not able to meet the cut-off date of December 31, 2019, while some have issues with complying with the documentary requirements.
“We also would like to clarify that these recorded unliquidated cash advances were supported by evaluated and validated liquidation reports”.
“We hope to continue these interventions in our finances, in the spirit of transparency, accountability, and efficient public service”, DepEd added.
