Duterte to keep P650 million in intel funds for OVP, DepEd

Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte is likely to keep P650 million in confidential funds in the 2023 national expenditure plan, Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara said.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III and fellow opposition Sen. Risa Hontiveros had questioned the propriety of allotting confidential and intelligence funds.

But Angara, who chairs the Senate finance committee, said he and the other members of the so-called “supermajority” in the Senate were inclined to allow the Vice President’s proposed spending plan.

“For me, it’s not good to take away the budget from someone who was elected by the people and was given the allotment by the President under his first-ever [national] budget,” Angara said.

“Let’s not deprive her office because the people and the President want the Vice President to succeed,” he said.

“It may be realigned. It’s also possible that it will be transferred to the OVP because [DepEd] is also under the office of Duterte anyway,” he added.

Angara said that OVP was concerned about the “entire bureaucracy and the whole country” unlike the education department,  

“[Some of my colleagues] asked about what will happen to the funds if there will be a change in the leadership of DepEd. That fund will be left there,” Angara said.

“We know that the Vice President really needs that fund. So why not just put it [in the OVP]? That’s the opinion of some senators,” he noted.