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Philippines: Q1 budget deficit higher at P162.2B
Government spending surged in March, a Cabinet official said on Monday, resulting in a substantially higher first quarter budget deficit.
Quoting a preliminary Bureau of the Treasury report, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez 3rd told reporters that the January-March shortfall had reached P162.2 billion.
“[It] is P57.8 billion lower than program with good revenue performance,” he added.
The government set at P220-billion deficit target for the first quarter. The result in the comparable 2017 period was P83 billion.
The Finance chief’s claim would mean a 215-percent increase from the end-February budget gap of P51.5 billion based on data released earlier this month.
The February shortfall of P61.7 billion was a reversal from the P10.2-billion surplus recorded in January. For March alone, the deficit should have surged to P110.7 billion, also substantially higher than the P61.5 billion recorded a year earlier.
Dominguez has said that state spending and revenues posted double-digit growth during the first three months of the year.
“First-quarter collections of BIR (Bureau of Internal Revenue) and BoC (Bureau of Customs) increased by 16 percent and 24 percent, respectively, over same period last year,” he said.
”Disbursements grew by 31 percent for same period,” he added.
The Treasury bureau has yet to release official figures but data obtained by reporters showed that during the quarter, government revenues rose by 16.4 percent to P619.8 billion from P532.4 billion while expenditures grew 27 percent to P782 billion from P615.4 billion a year earlier.
Total tax revenues for the first three months of the year stood at P558.4 billion while non-tax earnings totaled P61.4 billion.
“Our ‘Build Build Build’ and Train (Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion) programs are working as planned,” Dominguez has said.
The Duterte administration is banking on the “Build Build Build” program to address the country’s infrastructure problems, pledging to spend up to P9 trillion over its six-year term with funds to be taken from the Comprehensive Tax Reform Program that includes the Train law that was implemented at the start of 2018.
Commenting on Dominguez’s announcement, Security Bank Corp. economist and Assistant Vice-President Angelo Taningco said that “deficit spending appears to be improving thus far this year in comparison to last year.”
Still, he said the bank continued to “expect this year’s fiscal deficit to fall short of its target of 3 percent of GDP (gross domestic product), with our projection pegged at 2.7 percent of GDP.”
Source: http://www.manilatimes.net/q1-budget-deficit-higher-at-p162-2b/394505/