Smaller budget deficit of P610B seen as 2019 comes to a close
The government expects to end 2019 with a narrower budget deficit of P610 billion as economic managers reduced the programmed full-year disbursements for public goods and services as a result of underspending at the start of 2019.
The Cabinet-level Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) last week cut this year’s budget-deficit ceiling from P624.4 billion previously.
Despite the lower budget-deficit cap, it would remain equivalent to 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
The budget deficit-to-GDP program for 2019 was aimed at jacking up spending on infrastructure and other public investments.
The DBCC sees the nominal GDP amounting to P18.78 trillion by end of 2019.
As of end-October, the budget deficit stood at P348.3 billion, 20.5-percent narrower compared with P438.1 billion in the same 10-month period in 2018.
The government underspent P1 billion a day from January to April this year as it operated using reenacted 2018 appropriations.
President Rodrigo Duterte signed this year’s P3.7-trillion national budget only in mid-April, as legislators, fighting over pork funds they could pocket, delayed the budget passage.
Tax and non-tax revenues this year were expected to reach P3.15 trillion, equivalent to 16.8 percent of GDP.
The 2019 expenditures program was slightly cut to P3.76 trillion or a fifth of GDP, from P3.77 trillion previously.
To keep the budget-deficit ceiling at 3.2 percent of GDP until 2022, the government seeks to collect revenues worth P3.49 trillion in 2020, P3.85 trillion in 2021, and P4.31 trillion in 2022.
Disbursements were projected to amount to P4.16 trillion next year, P4.59 trillion in 2021, and P5.12 trillion in 2022.
