MANILA — The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the Department of Transportation’s (DOTr) efforts to meet their spending program despite the budget delay are big contributors to achieving the 6 percent to 7 percent growth target this year.
This was stressed by Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III in a media interview after the Economic Development Cluster (EDC) meeting at the Department of Finance (DOF) office in Manila Thursday night.
“I’ve always maintained that we believe that we’ll most likely hit the lower end of our 6-7-percent target and it looks like our continuous monitoring of projects and removal of the bottlenecks is paying off,” he said.
“And I think, especially the two big infrastructure departments are doing their utmost and quite achieving a good percentage of their target,” he said.
Growth, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), in the first half of this year averaged at 5.5 percent, lower than the full-year goal of 6 percent to 7 percent.
It slipped to 5.6 percent in the first quarter from 6.3 percent in the last quarter of 2018 due to the impact of the delay in the approval of this year’s national budget.
Growth in the second quarter further slowed to 5.5 percent.
However, a recovery was posted in the third quarter when GDP rose by 6.2 percent due mainly to the catch-up program for infrastructure projects, with both the DPWH and the DOTr tasked to hasten the implementation of their respective projects.
Economic managers are confident that a full-year target is now achievable as the government accelerates spending on infrastructure and human capital-related programs.
Based on the statement released after the EDC meeting, Dominguez said almost 100 percent of this year’s PHP3.66-trillion national budget has been disbursed to various government agencies.
“With this, it is expected that disbursements will further accelerate in the remaining two months of this year to support a higher GDP growth rate,” he said.
Total disbursement as of end-October 2019 reached PHP2.938 trillion, 78 percent of this year’s PHP3.77-trillion disbursement budget.
Dominguez said expenditures for infrastructure and other capital outlays reached PHP628.5 billion as of last October and is about 73 percent of this year’s PHP859.5-billion program.
He, however, said the latest figure is 5.5 percent lower than the year-ago level “mainly due to the delay of the passage of the 2019 national budget and election ban.”
“To attain our target disbursement of PHP3.77 trillion in 2019, the government needs to disburse PHP832 billion or 22 percent for the remaining two months of the year,” he said.
Dominguez added Public Works and Highways Secretary Mark Villar has assured economic managers that the agency will be able to meet its PHP725-billion disbursement program this year since it has so far disbursed 69 percent amounting to PHP503.4 billion.
Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade is confident of meeting its disbursement target even as the agency has disbursed only 57 percent or PHP46.82 billion of its budget as of November 28.
“DOTr expects to disburse an additional PHP30.85 billion in the last month of the year to fulfill 94 percent its commitment of PHP82.39 billion for 2019,” Dominguez said.
Other contributors to the catch-up spending program are the infrastructure projects of the Department of Education (DepEd) and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), among others.
Dominguez said the government is also hastening the implementation of the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program to the about 3.88 million beneficiaries, which is about 93.21 percent of 4.16 million target beneficiaries.
“Overall, we remain on track to reach our GDP growth target of 6 to 7 percent in 2019,” he added.