Aquino rolls up sleeves to tackle infra spending

President Benigno Aquino III has taken a more hands-on role in tackling his administration’s chronic underspending, setting up a string of weekly meetings to iron out kinks that continue to hobble the rollout of government projects.

Malacañang has also authorized the creation of special supervisory bodies, which will answer to senior economic managers, to ensure that key departments will not squander their big budgets for this year.

This comes amid bureaucratic bottlenecks that continue to stunt the country’s economic growth which, in the first quarter, fell short of the official target.

“We’ve been given homework to do so we can put together a roadmap to mitigate the problem of underspending,” Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Florencio Abad told reporters Wednesday.

Another cabinet meeting has been set next week to address the problem of underspending, Abad said.

In the first quarter of 2015, Philippine gross domestic product, which measures the size of the economy by summarizing all the business done during the period, grew by just 5.2 percent. The administration’s growth goal for this year stands at 7-8 percent.

The disappointing first quarter figure was blamed largely on the government’s underspending, which was a result of “technical deficits” of line agencies tasked with spending the money.

Government data released last month showed slower expenditures, bringing the first quarter budget deficit to P33.5 billion, which was below the programmed P98.1 billion, as well as the P84.1 billion posted in the first three months of 2014.

Earlier, Mr. Aquino met with the heads of major agencies to identify spending constraints. The Department of Health posted the biggest spending during the period.