MANILA — Budget and Management Secretary Benjamin Diokno is optimistic for a seven percent growth of the Philippine economy in the first quarter of 2018, which falls within the lower end of government’s seven to eight percent 2018-2022 growth target.
“We plan to grow at around seven to eight percent. More like seven (percent) so let’s shoot for seven (percent) at the moment,” he said in his weekly Breakfast with Ben briefing Wednesday.
Growth drivers would be the strong expansion of both the government revenues and spending, he said.
Data released by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Wednesday showed that expenditures rose by 26 percent year-on-year as of end-February 2018 to Php469 billion from year-ago’s Php373.7 billion.
Last February alone, government spending amounted to Php240.3 billion, up by 37 percent compared to the Php175.6 billion spent on the same month in 2017.
Spending on infrastructure and other capital outlays as of last January reached Php 43.3 billion, up 25.2 percent than year-ago’s Php34.5 billion.
Diokno attributed this to the Duterte administration’s expansive infrastructure program dubbed “Build, Build, Build”, underwhich about Php1 trillion is scheduled to be spent annually until 2022.
These include projects of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) such as school buildings, flood control and mitigation projects and Lahar control works in Central Luzon among others.
“We still have eight months to go. And this is not going to be finished within one year so as long as we are addressing the Right of Way issues, the construction , we have already identified the contractors, I think it’s easy to catch up,” he said.
Since 2017, the government has adopted a one-year validity for budget allocation to encourage agencies to spend their funds within the year instead of extending project implementation to the following year, which is the practice in the past. This scheme was targeted to address underspending.
Diokno disclosed that as of end-March this year DBM has released Php3.165 trillion or 84 percent of this year’s Php 3.767 trillion obligation budget to the agencies.
“This is an improvement from the previous year where only 79.9 percent of the Php3.35 trillion budget was released in the same period,” he said.
The balance of 16 percent is accounted for by lumpsum funds such as calamity fund and some miscellaneous personnel benefit fund, which will only be released once needs arise and upon submission of special budget request and other necessary documents, he said.
“This show that fiscal program of the national government is on track backed by strong performance in both government spending and revenue collections…We are optimistic that we will cut down underspending even further from 2.4 percent last year,” he added. (Joann Villanueva/PNA)
