Government disburses 98.9% of 2011 budget

MANILA, Philippines - The Aquino administration has disbursed 98.9 percent or P1.626-trillion of its 2011 budget, Budget and Management Secretary Florencio Abad said yesterday.

Abad said the amount has been released as of Dec. 31, 2011, as the administration raced against time to boost spending and make up for lackluster disbursements in the first half of last year.

“We are pleased to announce that fund releases under the 2011 GAA have reached 98.9 percent by the end of the year. This is a clear year-on-year improvement over the 96.1-percent rate for the 2010 budget,” he said.

Furthermore, Abad said that under Automatic Appropriations, the government has successfully retained P105.5 billion in interest-payment savings as of Nov. 30, 2011.

The savings represent mainly lowered debt volume and favorable foreign exchange rates.

The number of treasury bonds also decreased in 2011, he added.

Abad said the Aquino administration launched its P72-billion Disbursement Acceleration Plan (DAP), there has been significant increase in releases for various departments and government agencies.

The releases have exceeded the original target, Abad said, but supported by interest payments and dividends from government-owned and -controlled corporations (GOCCs).

Outside the 2011 GAA, the DBM has released P107.3 billion as of end-December last year.

Of the amount, the government got the P44.6 billion from Continuing Appropriations of fiscal year 2010.

“Unprogrammed fund releases — including those that supported loans relent to GOCCs and new foreign-assisted projects, as well as infrastructure projects and social service programs — amounted to P20.2 billion, P18.5 billion of which was funded by additional GOCC dividends collected in January 2010,” data from the Budget department showed.

Additional releases under Automatic Appropriations amounted to P42.5 billion but these Abad said, have been adequately supported by revenue sources.

In a separate interview yesterday, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Cayetano Paderanga Jr. said the economic team would be doing a monthly monitoring of expenditures to improve spending.

This is in contrast to the practice in the past when monitoring of expenditures was done on a quarterly basis and not every month.