MANILA – The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) has around P10.17 billion worth of questionable transactions for its programs intended for charity and medical assistance in 2017, the Commission on Audit (COA) said.
The PCSO used P5.89 billion for the wrong purpose, COA’s annual audit report showed.
“Expenses not related to charity programs/projects totaling P5.89 billion were charged to the Charity Fund, which may deplete the same and eventually affect the delivery and implementation of the mandated purposes,” the COA said.
The PCSO used the money to help strengthen higher education and pay documentary stamp taxes, services of employees assigned at charity clinics and medical benefits of all employees, which should be under the Operating Fund.
It paid P5.3 billion to Bureau of Internal Revenue for documentary stamp taxes and P318 million to the Commission on Higher Education (CHED).
The PCSO also charged P204 million to its Expanded Medical Assistance Program (EMAP) and P67.98 million to its Charity Clinic.
The COA recommended that the PCSO must charge its Charity Clinic expenses under the Operating Fund starting January 2018 while the EMAP must remain to be charges under the Charity Fund being a health-related expense.
The COA added that the CHED contributions and documentary stamp taxes must not be charged under the Charity Fund since these are not health-related.
Moreover, COA’s report showed that PCSO’s Charity Fund had a deficit of more than P1.43 billion from revenues on the online Keno Gaming Operations, which has an accumulated loss of P4.28 billion since 2006.
“Why the online game continues to operate even if it already incurred a multibillion-peso deficit?” COA said. “A computation of the contributed amount of Keno operations, showed it only generated P2.85 billion for 11 years, or an excess deficit of P1.43 billion.”
The COA added, “It can be concluded that the current operation of the online Keno game is not financially viable. Moreover, the continuous incurrence of deficit by the Keno operations had negatively affected the consolidated Prize Fund of PCSO.”/PN
