SENATOR FLAGS ₱9.2-B IN UNOBLIGATED CHED FUNDS
/ 18 October 2025
SENATE Finance Committee Chairperson Sherwin Gatchalian has questioned the Commission on Higher Education over its growing unobligated funds—money that remains unspent despite being allocated—amounting to ₱9.2 billion from 2019 to 2024.
During the Senate deliberations on CHED’s proposed budget, Gatchalian expressed concern that the unused funds represent missed opportunities to strengthen higher education programs, particularly scholarships intended to assist poor and deserving students.
“This is money that has already been allocated to CHED but was not utilized,” Gatchalian said, emphasizing that such inefficiency undermines the goal of expanding access to quality tertiary education.
CHED Chairperson Shirley Agrupis acknowledged the issue and said the agency is implementing measures to improve fund utilization.
Among the reforms, she said, is the enhancement of CHED’s data systems to facilitate faster fund downloading for scholarship programs.
Agrupis admitted that one of the major causes of delay is the manual validation process of scholarship beneficiaries, which relies heavily on data from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
She explained that CHED conducts its own validation of hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries under the Tulong Dunong Program and the Tertiary Education Subsidy, which further slows down disbursement.
However, Agrupis said the commission has recently streamlined the process. Once CHED receives the DSWD’s list of qualified students, it immediately forwards the information to regional and provincial offices for dissemination and faster implementation.
Gatchalian urged CHED to ensure that its funds are fully utilized moving forward, stressing that every peso should directly benefit students and improve the quality of higher education in the country.