Government releases more than half of budget

MANILA, Philippines - More than half of this year’s national budget were already released in the first month of 2016, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) said.

According to its website, 64.2 percent or P1.928 trillion of the P3.002 trillion outlay are already in the hands of agencies, departments and local government units.

Budget officials could not be immediately reached for comment, but the Aquino administration has traditionally frontloaded bulk of the outlay to fast track projects and programs.

“That’s good news and in line with our expectations that growth will be higher in the first half,” said Alvin Ang, economist at Ateneo de Manila University, in a text message.

The local economy grew 5.8 percent last year, marking a second year of slowdown and missing the seven to eight percent target.

Much of the slowdown has been blamed to lackluster government spending, which Budget Secretary Florencio Abad had said will be faster this year.

Once released, agencies would still have to pass documentary requirements for specific projects to be granted a notice of cash allocation (NCA) that is used to get checks from the Bureau of the Treasury.

Edmund Tayao, political analyst at University of Santo Tomas said the bulk release early in the year may be bad for the next administration that takes over in July.

“For the first six month of the new administration, there could be lesser public funds,” Tayao said in a separate text message over the weekend.

Abad, for his part, had earlier said the same case was experienced by the Aquino administration when it took the helm in the middle of 2010.

According to DBM data, P1.421 trillion of the budget releases were in the form of departmental budgets. That represents 85.5 percent of the P1.662-trillion allocation.

Meanwhile, only a little more than a tenth of special purpose funds (SPFs) were released. The figure is equivalent to P42.18 billion of the P408.29-billion program.

SPFs include automatic appropriations covering retirement pensions, calamity funds, and government support to state corporations and local government units.

The remaining P1.033 billion was put under “other releases.” Under this, P271.06 million was released to fund the military’s modernization.