THE World Bank has approved $1.16 million of grants to the Philippine national government to strengthen the management and use of public funds.

In a statement, the Manila-based bank said the grants were approved under its Institutional Development Fund (IDF) to strengthen capacity and improve the efficiency of several government agencies.

Those that received the grants were the Commission on Audit (COA), $300,000, the Department of Budget and Management’s (DBM) PhilGEPS Group Procurement Service, $299,985, the fiscal Planning Bureau, $300,000, and the Local Government Academy (LGA), $260,000.

“The World Bank is pleased to assist the government’s efforts to build the capacities of state agencies. We expect these grants to the COA, the DBM and LGA to improve governance of public resources and delivery of services to the Filipino people,” World Bank Philippines country director Bert Hofman said.

The grants to the DBM would fund technical assistance to build up its capacity in policy-based budgeting under its medium-term expenditure framework, and strengthen the capacity of the procurement service in implementing the government’s electronic procurement system.

The bank noted Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya as saying the IDF grant will enhance the DBM’s capacity to develop sound policy analysis that will improve the quality of the recommendations given to the Development Budget Coordination Committee and to the President and her Cabinet.

Andaya said he hoped the grant will help the department continue to restructure the budget toward strategic policies and priority areas and be more responsive to the needs of the times through sound technical analysis and systematic internal consultations with key stakeholders on tradeoffs, agency outputs/outcomes and multiyear implications of strategic policies.

“The grant for the PhilGEPS will enhance it with features like online bidding and payments. The support that will be given for the raining of government procurement personnel and suppliers will, we hope, contribute to furthering transparency and reducing corruption,” Andaya was quoted as saying in the ADB statement.

Meanwhile, the grant to the COA aims to improve its effectiveness and efficiency in auditing government revenues and expenditures through results-based integrated audit that focuses on outputs and outcomes using a risk-based audit approach.

Acting COA chair Reynaldo Villar said in the statement that the grant will support the capacity and effectiveness of the COA. The project aims to integrate the different audit approaches that the COA is presently doing, more specifically the risk-based audit, procurement audit, compliance audit, fraud Audit and performance audit.

“It is consistent with the harmonization objectives in the implementation of foreign-assisted projects, promotes better audit planning and execution, ensures balance scoping of the different types of audit to satisfy clients’ needs and legal requirements, as well as conforms with international auditing standards. Moreover, it will enhance the information value of audit reports,” Villar said.

On the other hand, the IDF grant aims to build and strengthen the capacity of the LGA to coordinate and oversee the many existing training programs available for local government units (LGUs).

Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno said in the statement the grant responds to the key development challenge of improving the competencies of LGUs under the decentralization program.

“Although there are a large number of training institutions providing training to LGUs, the effectiveness of these programs is undermined by fragmentation, duplication and lack of adequate coordination and oversight. This has resulted in poorly targeted training programs and a mismatch between demand and supply of training. The IDF grant will help build LGA capacity to rationalize the use of all of these resources,” Puno said.

The World Bank’s IDF supports capacity-building activities of existing and new constituents, focusing on results-based monitoring and evaluation, public expenditure and financial accountability, procurement and legal and judicial reforms.

THE RATE for one-year Treasury bills, the new but temporary lending benchmark, rose 92.2 basis points to 6.915 percent Monday, the Bureau of Treasury said.

BANCO de Oro Unibank (BDO) is raising at least P5 billion in Lower Tier 2 capital to support business growth and refinance $200 million in existing Tier 2 notes callable in July.

THE World Bank has approved $1.16 million of grants to the Philippine national government to strengthen the management and use of public funds.

IBM Philippines recently hosted a C-level event for IBM Global Financing (IGF) at the Marco Polo Hotel, Davao City, as one of many activities the company is implementing in line with its geo-expansion initiatives to widen its reach and operations in key cities and locations outside Metro Manila.

CHINA Banking Corp. (ChinaBank) is the first bank in Southeast Asia to purchase the new SelfServ ATM units developed and manufactured by NCR Corp.