PH infrastructure spending surges 26% as of Oct.

Public infrastructure spending as of October this year grew at a double-digit pace, according to the Department of Budget and Management.

DBM reported Monday that in the first 10 months of the year, government spending for various infrastructure projects amounted to P208 billion, up year-on-year by 25.7 percent.

These projects include those implemented by the Department of Public Works and Highways, transportation and communication facilities of the Department of Transportation and Communication, and irrigation projects of the Department of Agriculture.

“We are pleased to note that infrastructure disbursements continued their double-digit growth over the figures posted in the same period last year,” Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said in a statement.

He said the infrastructure projects were meant to keep the economy’s growth momentum, improve the delivery of services and to make the Philippines at par with the rest of the region when it comes to infrastructure spending.

Public infrastructure spending in the Philippines remains below 3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), while the average for Southeast Asian economies is 5 percent.

Abad said the government acknowledged the country’s need to compete in terms of infrastructure, thus the pace of spending will be maintained until the end of the Aquino administration in 2016.

The 25.7-percent growth in infrastructure spending as of October, however, was slower than the 34 percent registered as of September.

The slowdown came amid the public’s questioning of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), which the DBM explained was a mechanism to expedite government expenditures.

Observers said criticisms of the DAP could have prompted the DBM to go slow on the program’s implementation.

Under the DAP, the budget department realigns funds from projects that are “slow moving” and deemed less important to those that are easier to implement and supposedly “more vital” ones, such as infrastructure.

The intention of the DAP, the budget department earlier said, was to ensure that government spending catches up with what has been programmed for the year to help the economy keep its robust pace of growth.