95.3% of 2015 budget released as of October

MANILA, Philippines - Less than 5 percent of this year’s national budget is in the hands of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) by the end of October, latest government data showed.

A total of 95.3 percent or P2.84 trillion of the P2.606-trillion budget this year has already been released to agencies for the first 10 months of the year.

Released budget means they are a step away from actually getting spent by state entities. After the release, funds will need to be obligated for specific projects before actual disbursement could take place.

Only once an agency actually paid for products and services is the data recorded on the government’s monthly fiscal performance. As of October, the budget deficit has been contained at P52.6 billion against a year-end cap of P283.7 billion.

Budget officials could not be reached for comment, but economists weighed in on the latest data as far as criticisms of persistent below-target spending is concerned.

Patrick Ella, economist at Security Bank Corp., said while the problem could be traced from the agencies’ absorptive capacities, questions could also be posed to DBM for increasing the budget too much.

“You already know that the line agencies are having deployment issues so why still set large targets for them?” Ella said in a phone interview.

Nicholas Antonio Mapa of the Bank of the Philippine Islands agreed with Ella, saying line agencies have been the “bottleneck” on spending, not the DBM.

“The government have always been saying that they are ramping up spending. I think, the problem at this stage is more of getting the line agencies to spend the money they get from the DBM,” Mapa said separately.   

Broken down, data showed 97.1 percent of department budgets have already been released. That translated to P1.295 trillion of the P1.334 trillion allotments for this year.

Special purpose funds, which include calamity and contingent funds, amounted to P274.5 billion as of October, 67.6 percent of the total P405.92-billion budget.

Meanwhile, releases from automatic appropriations — which include retirement pensions, debt interest payments and internal revenue allotment — reached P828.55 billion as of October.

The figure accounted for 95.7 percent of the P866.23 billion segregated in 2015, figures showed.

Once the budget is released, agencies would still need to secure notices of cash allocation (NCA) from the DBM, which they will use to get checks from the Bureau of the Treasury. Once NCA is utilized, disbursement is recorded in the government balance sheet.

The STAR reported last Tuesday that P1.675 trillion in NCAs have already been released as of November, of which 92 percent or P1.547 trillion have been encashed.