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Sunday, May 21, 2006
Gov’t vows to minimize expenditures
BUDGET Secretary Rolando Andaya Jr. said the government did not underspend in order to get a budget surplus in April and that it has no intention of overspending in the second quarter.
Andaya was reacting to the study by UBS Investment Research that government was able to post a budget surplus last April by slashing spending.
He said releases proceeded based on schedule, with government spending at P350 billion, which is lower than the programmed level of P366.8 billion.
He added that the total deficit for the first four months was only P50.1 billion or lower than the estimated P72 billion estimate for the period and the P59.8 billion deficit for the same period last year.
Andaya said government will stick to first semester disbursement level of P546.9 billion. Government is targeting a deficit of P124.9 billion this year or expenditures of P1.099 trillion and revenues of P974.1 billion.
He said the budget surplus was due to improved revenue collections and not on controlled spending.
“The impression that we deliberately turned off the taps is not true. We did not choke spending just for the sake of presenting a glowing report card,” he added.
Andaya however admitted receiving reports that some agencies slackened in their use of their notices of cash allocation. He said he will call their attention to identify the bottlenecks in their use of funds, especially for pump-priming activities. (JMR/Sunnex)
(May 21, 2006 issue)
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