Gov't spending seen to jump further in 2nd semester - Abad

Monday 3rd of September 2012

QUEZON CITY, Sept 3 (PIA) -- Spending by the national government in the second half of the year is expected to jump further, Budget Secretary Florencio B. Abad confirmed.

In a statement, Abad said this is in view of the reforms and measures implemented by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), which resulted for the infrastructure and capital outlay spending to soar to P106.2 billion or 64.7 percent from January to July.

“Disbursements for Maintenance and Other Operating Expenditures (MOOE) also sent spending levels on an upswing, with disbursements under this expense class up by 37.2 percent to P134.6 billion,” it said.

According to the budget department, P58 million of the 2012 National Budget has already been released from January to July of this year.

The figure is 15 percent higher than that of the previous year.

“We’ve already implemented some landmark reforms to speed up disbursements across all government departments and agencies, as well as clear up bottlenecks that only result in costly delays in project execution. We’re pleased to note that these measures have already produced results, with departments optimizing the releases made to them and disbursements enjoying higher levels in July,” Abad said.

The secretary said creating Account Management Teams in the largest spending departments helped drive disbursements and speed up budget utilization.

“Furthermore, we’ve warned laggard agencies that unless they obligate their appropriations by September, we will have to forfeit the releases in favor of fast-moving projects,” he said.

Abad also said that growth in disbursement levels can be attributed mostly to the improved utilization of Notices of Cash Allocation (NCA) in July.

It rose to 97.2 percent of the effective NCAs issued from January to July 2012,

“This registered a year-on-year increase of 19.1 percent resulting from quicker NCA utilization by some agencies, particularly the Department of Public Works and Highways and the Department of Social Welfare and Development,” Abad said.

He added that the implementation of the Performance-Based Incentive System for government employees—designed to reward agencies for meeting their targets—should help ramp up spending as departments step up on service delivery and project execution.(DBM/PIA-GHQ)