Gov’t spending seen to have picked up pace

The government is expecting a budget deficit in September after posting a surplus in August, Budget Secretary Florencio B. Abad said, citing accelerated spending during the period.

At the sidelines of a forum on health financing Thursday, Abad said that government spending in September was “much better than August.”

“We spent more. The rate of spending was higher than the rate of collection,” Abad told reporters.

The Department of Budget and Management already deployed account management teams in key departments in a bid to improve the pace and quality of public spending.

The deployment of account management teams is meant to enhance government disbursements by identifying and addressing implementation bottlenecks.

Account management teams have been deployed to the Departments of Public Works and Highways, Transportation and Communications, Education, Health, Social Welfare and Development, Agriculture, Agrarian Reform, National Defense and Interior and Local Government.

The government posted a budget surplus of P2.5 billion in August as expenditures hit P126.9 billion while revenue reached P129.4 billion.

The surplus in August brought the January-August deficit down to P71.2 billion, just 39 percent of the P183.3 billion that the government planned to spend on top of the national budget for the first nine months.

Expenses during the first eight months of the year reached P1.08 trillion while eight-month revenue reached P1.01 trillion.