What is DAP ? Why is it , it was introduced ? How does it work ? How DAP benefit our economy ? How and why DAP become unconstitutional ? These are just some questions being asked by people that needed to be answered and analyzed well. Well , DAP stands for DISBURSEMENT ACCELERATION PROGRAM and was introduced by the President Ninoy Aquino’s administration , as a reform intervention to speed-up public spending and to boost economic growth. It is not a fund, but a mechanism to support high-impact and priority programs and projects using savings and unprogrammed funds. DAP also enabled the government to introduce greater speed, efficiency, and effectiveness in budget execution.
DAP was introduced when the Aquino Administration assumed office in 2010, it unearthed systemic inefficiencies in public spending. These included poorly-designed and questionable projects that need to be cancelled; the prevalence of lump sum funds; implementation bottlenecks; among others. Unfortunately, its efforts to plug leakages and reform the budget execution process had the effect of slowing down spending.
From January to September of 2011, government disbursements shrank by 7.3 percent year-on-year. Underspending was most severe in the case of infrastructure, which slumped by 51.3 percent. These, alongside the global economic slowdown, pulled down gross domestic product (GDP) growth to 3.6 percent in the first three quarters of 2011, from 7.6 percent in 2010. Clearly, the government could not have afforded to nothing.
The DAP tapped the power of the president over a) the use of savings to augment deficient programs and projects; and b) the use of unprogrammed funds. * Savings are available portions or balances of items under the General Appropriations Act (GAA) which result from: a) the completion or final discontinuance or abandonment of a program, activity,
