Lacson: Time to Devolve Procurement, Project Implementation Functions to LGUs
Lacson: Time to Devolve Procurement, Project Implementation Functions to LGUs November 10, 2021 - To prevent corruption and underutilization of the national budget, it is high time that the government devolve its procurement of supplies and implementation of projects to the local government units, Sen. Panfilo "Ping" M. Lacson said Wednesday. Lacson said national agencies have shown bad procurement decisions, including the transfer of P42 billion to the Department of Budget and Management's Procurement Service - which in turn allowed shady firms such as Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp. to bag multibillion-peso contracts despite lack of qualifications. "Why don’t we devolve the procurement of medicines, drugs and other items? It's about time. Time and again we have witnessed bad procurement by the DOH and other line agencies," he said at the Senate deliberation on the P5.024-trillion budget for 2022. Lacson, who champions the empowerment of LGUs as they are