{"id":29597,"date":"2014-10-22T15:28:42","date_gmt":"2014-10-22T07:28:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=29597"},"modified":"2014-10-23T13:15:29","modified_gmt":"2014-10-23T05:15:29","slug":"budget-nearly-balanced-says-govt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/10\/22\/budget-nearly-balanced-says-govt\/","title":{"rendered":"Budget nearly balanced says gov\u2019t"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MANILA \u2013 While there are concerns over the state\u2019s ability to boost growth given the rise in consumer prices and interest rates, data on Friday showed that the government was able almost balance in budget in July because of lesser expenditures.<\/p>\n

This supports that recently released data that showed the government\u2019s inability to contribute to economic growth in the second quarter of the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d rather see (bigger) budget deficits at this point in time\u2026 They are unable to provide the type of lift we need now that the economy is facing headwinds,\u201d said Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) economist Nicholas Mapa during an interview.<\/p>\n

On Friday, treasury data revealed that the country\u2019s budget deficit fell to P1.8 billion in July, down by 97 percent year-on-year. Revenue increased by 15 percent, while spending fell by 15 percent as well.<\/p>\n

Since the beginning of the year until July, the deficit amounted to P55.7 billion, lower than 2013\u2019s P104.5 billion.<\/p>\n

One of the main drivers of economic growth this year is government spending because of the size of the infrastructure package in the budget.<\/p>\n

The government shared that it has plans of spending P404.3 billion for construction of new roads, bridges, and other infrastructure projects.<\/p>\n

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the country\u2019s growth targets remained \u201ccontingent\u201d on their capacity to spend.<\/p>\n

During the second quarter of the year, the economy increased by 6.4 percent, higher compared with first quarter\u2019s growth of 5.7 percent. For 2014, the country targets to grow the economy by 6.5 to 7.5 percent.<\/p>\n

Earlier, officials blamed the government\u2019s lack of ability to stick to its spending program.<\/p>\n

However, Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima remains optimistic because he is focused instead on the state\u2019s revenue growth.<\/p>\n

Collections increased by 12 percent year-on-year to date.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have maintained this trend of faster revenue growth than nominal GDP growth since 2011,\u201d Purisima said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Mapa noted that authorities should accelerate disbursements to answer the issues that make it difficult for them to spend.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow that they have the money, they should be spending it. No other government has had the kind of fiscal space we have now,\u201d Mapa said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA \u2013 While there are concerns over the state\u2019s ability to boost growth given the rise in consumer prices and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":20521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[631],"class_list":["post-29597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ph","tag-budget","mauthors-lei-fontamillas","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}