Funding Issues

Economic managers agree to cooperate on funding issues

The Budget, Finance and Socioeconomic Planning chiefs have agreed on closer cooperation between their departments in the effort to stretch the government’s scarce resources.

"[We came up with] an agreement on a framework of cooperation to enable us to support the president’s priorities and raise the funding requirements to undertake them," Budget Secretary Florencio "Butch" B. Abad said in a text message on Friday.

Mr. Abad, Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima and Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Cayetano W. Paderanga, Jr. met earlier in the day to discuss how to channel funding to President Benigno C. Aquino III’s priority concerns.

"We drew an outline to look at possible bottlenecks that we have to deal with, the priority areas, and how we could raise funding requirements," Mr. Abad added.

Details as to how the three government agencies would be cooperating will be drafted by the Finance and Budget undersecretaries, who were likewise tasked to determine specific projects that need funding, he said.

All these will be presented to Mr. Aquino within the next two weeks, Mr. Abad said.

Messrs. Purisima and Paderanga were not immediately available for comment.

Mr. Abad said Mr. Aquino wanted to channel more funds to health education, social protection and infrastructure, among other areas that he mentioned in his inaugural speech on Wednesday.

Addressing the shortage of classrooms, for instance, would require an estimated P20 billion, he said.

Among the issues inherited by the Aquino administration is a massive budget deficit expected to hit P300 billion this year, topping last year’s record shortfall of P298.5 billion.

The government breached its first half deficit cap of P145.2 billion in May as spending ahead of the national elections pushed to five-month tally to P162.1 billion.