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SUCs assistance funds: Sen. Joel Villanueva, during a virtual hearing on the proposed 2022 budgets of State Universities and Colleges (SUCs) and the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Thursday, October 21, 2021, asks CHED Chairman Prospero de Vera III to give the committee an update on the reported unused assistance funds granted to a number of SUCs because the deadline for procurement already lapsed last June 30. De Vera said 89 SUCs got grants for a maximum of P25 million, all vetted with checks issued before June 30. However, he said, some Department of Budget and Management regional offices told SUCs that they could not continue with their procurement because their funds were covered by the provisions of Bayanihan 2 which prohibited inter-governmental transfers beyond June 30. “The position of the commission is that these are not inter-governmental transfers because the use of money is not determined by CHED anymore. We are giving the SUCs money to implement their projects and some of the SUCs had already started pre-procurement,” de Vera explained. He said he wrote the DBM last week on the issue and is waiting for its reply. (Screen grab/Senate PRIB)