ARTA rues reduced allocation

The Anti-Red Tape Authority said Monday it could do its job better if the House of Representatives would allocate it more funds in the coming year.

ARTA Director General Ernesto Perez said ARTA had submitted a budget request of roughly P780 million under its National Expenditure Program for 2024.

"What was granted to us by the Department of Budget and Management was barely 35 percent," he lamented. Perez said under the General Appropriations Act of 2023, ARTA received P219 million.

ARTA was flagged by the Commission on Audit in its 2022 report for failing to investigate complaints in a timely manner to ensure the implementation of the Ease of Doing Business and Efficient Delivery of Government Services Program.

CoA said it took ARTA an average of 124 days just to accomplish the first step of the complaint resolution process, which is the issuance of a notice to file a sworn answer.

"We are concerned if this were to remain the practice of ARTA. It would erode its reputation and eventually defeat the purpose of ARTA as one of the institutions specifically tasked to thwart red tape and corruption," the 2022 CoA report read.

But Perez said they had already properly responded to the CoA report, and the problem was raised because of the deferment of the electronic complaint management system, or ARTA e-CMS, that the previous administration launched in 2022.

"It was not able to be implemented because of budgetary constraints. So, we had to suspend that and go back to the manual way. The CoA took note of that. In fact, in our 2020 audit report, we had zero CoA findings," he said.

Perez said that ARTA's complaint resolution rate was presently at 99 percent.