MANILA, Philippines—A total of 58 National Sports Associations (NSAs) have a combined P130.6 million in unliquidated cash advances that the government is asking them to settle immediately.
Aquatics, whose swimmers failed to win a single gold medal in the recent Southeast Asian Games in Indonesia, owns the biggest unliquidated amount of P10,526,638.
Philippine Sports Commission chair Richie Garcia has released a directive ordering the NSAs to liquidate said advances before the end of the year or risk having their requests for financial assistance turned down by the government sports-funding agency.
Part of the unliquidated amount of aquatics (P4,932,106), which is headed by POC deputy secretary general Mark Joseph, came before Garcia assumed
office. The breakdown of unliquidated assistance includes: swimming (P8,066,537), diving (P752,981), water polo (P1,513,022) and synchronized swimming (P194,096).
Some of the NSAs with huge amounts of unliquidated advances include those that also failed to win a gold in the SEA Games: Gymnastics (P6,654,044), shooting (P5,674,931), volleyball (P5,179,330), football/futsal (P5,014,331), leadership-torn karatedo (P4,863,921), wrestling (P4,521,280), weightlifting (P4,313,545), muay (P3,536,144), sailing (P3,279,203), table tennis (P3,066,635), pencak silat (P2,351,303) and windsurfing (P2,178,428).
Other NSAs that have big amounts to liquidate are wushu (P7,967,254), canoe-kayak (P5,654,863), chess (P5,430,138), judo (P4,447,668), athletics (P4,530,730), archery (P4,129,440), cycling (P4,649,625), fencing (P2,470,934), bowling (P2,349,106) and softball (P2,303,170).
“If the NSAs don’t liquidate by the end of the year, they will not get any assistance next year,” said Garcia. “They have until the end of this month to settle their accounts.”
Baseball, which struck gold in the Palembang SEA Games, has no financial liability with the government as well as hand ball, ice skating, petanque and rugby football, based on the document certified by PSC chief accountant Rosalina Colendrino on Nov. 30.
Advances by Little League Philippines, where PSC commissioner Jolly Gomez is an official, have reached P2,950,000 and remained unsettled until now.