Gov’t stepping up infra spending

The government will accelerate spending on infrastructure in the fourth quarter of the year in a bid to meet its expenditure program for 2013.

This was according to Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, who said that like in the previous years, government spending was likely to shoot up in the latter part of the year.

“We can expect spending on public works to catch up in the remaining months of the year,” Abad told reporters Thursday after attending the Integrity Summit organized by various business groups.

As such, he said, there was still a chance the expenditure program for the full year—set at P1.99 trillion—could still be achieved.

In the first semester, government spending fell substantially short of the programmed level.

Expenditures during the period reached P890.8 billion, or about P55 billion short of the expenditure programmed for the first six months.

The shortfall was partly blamed on the low absorptive capacities of some line agencies.

Abad, however, said measures had already been implemented to speed up spending by government agencies.

The shortfall in spending in the first semester elicited speculations that the government’s budget deficit this year would be much lower than the P238-billion ceiling set by the government.

The ceiling is equivalent to 2 percent of the projected gross domestic product (GDP) for this year.

Abad, however, said that with the intention to fast-track spending in the remainder of the year, the deficit this year could still be close to the ceiling.

The DBM earlier said that even as actual spending fell below target in the first semester, the amount was substantially higher than the level in the same period last year.

The P890.8 billion spending in the first semester was up by 12 percent from P795.4 billion in the same period last year.

The DBM also said that spending for capital outlays alone, which amounted to P125.5 billion in the first semester, was up by 42.2 percent year-on-year.