Debt, tax numbers looking good: DOF

Key fiscal indicators improved in the first three months of the year as the rise in state tax collections continued to outpace growth, while the national government’s budget gap and outstanding debt remained very well managed.

The finance department said that the proportion of public debt to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) as of March this year reached 41.87 percent, an improvement from the 43.56 percent registered a year ago.

Also, the latest debt-to-GDP ratio was better than the 42.06 percent recorded at end-December last year, said Finance Undersecretary Gil Beltran, who is also the chief economist of the Department of Finance (DOF).

The government’s domestic debt was equivalent to 26.84 percent of the economy, down from 28.36 percent in the previous year and 29.87 percent as of December 2016.

Meanwhile, the tax effort, which is the proportion of taxes and duties to the GDP, settled at 13.41 percent as of end-March, up from the 12.99 percent reported in the same period last year.

At end-March 2017, the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s (BIR) tax effort improved to 10.36 percent from 10.09 percent last year, while the Bureau of Customs’ efficiency ratio stood at 2.91 percent, up from 2.76 percent.