The Commission on Audit (COA) has chided the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) for its "lapses" in the implementation of tertiary education subsidy (TES) such as the delayed release of P3.4 billion subsidies, double scholarship grants amounting to P546,000, and P16.8 billion unliquidated funds. In its Annual Audit Report (AAR) for 2022, the COA noted CHED Regional Office XII's delays ranging from 133 to 1,513 days in the release of TES benefits for academic years 2018 to 2019, 2020 to 2021, and 2021 to 2022 amounting to P3,428,537,700.50. "The delayed release of TES benefits deprived the student grantees, who are academically able yet economically disadvantaged, of the timely support of their cost of tertiary education," COA said. It said there were discrepancies in the scholarship grants given to 51 TES grantees. It cited that Item 2.4, Section X, of Joint Memorandum Circular (JMC) No. 04, series of 2020 provides that in the case of any student who was identified both as a Tulong-Dunong Program (TDP) or CHED Scholarship Program (CSP) beneficiary and at the same time a TES grantee, the name of the student shall be delisted in the list of TDP or CSP. It said that when its audit team reviewed the Master List of TES and TDP grantees covering 2019 to 2020 and 2020 to 2021, they discovered that 51 TES grantees were also beneficiaries of TDP/CSP in CHED Regional Offices II and IV-A. "The monetary benefits received by said grantees were not deducted from the amount of their TES grants, hence, resulted in the double payment of scholarship funds totalling P546,000," it said as it recommended that the duplicate scholarship grants should be returned. At the same time, COA said that its auditor unearthed unliquidated TES grants amounting to P16,869,314,007.63. Section 7 of UniFAST (Unified Financial Assistance System) Memorandum Circular No. 1, s. 2022 provides that for proper reporting on the release of funds, the liquidation reports (LRs) and its supporting documents should be submitted within 90 days after the end of the second semester to CHED regional offices. In this case, the COA said that the non-liquidation of fund transfers to Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) will result in the delayed submission of LRs to the audit team, which also hinders its timely audit. COA then asked CHED regional offices in the National Capital Region, Cordillera Administrative Region, Regions I, II, IV-A, V, VII, VIII, XI, XII, and XIII to strictly enforce and demand HEIs to immediately submit their LRs together with supporting documents, which will serve as the basis in the evaluation of authenticity of the claims. It also said that CHED should strengthen its monitoring mechanism to strictly monitor the liquidation of all fund transfers to the participating HEIs.