Funds available for Duterte gov’t

Only around 31 percent of state agency funds were spent over the first four months of the year, underscoring the availability of funds for the incoming Duterte administration.

A total P650.27 billion in notices of cash allocation (NCA) were issued as of April, data from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) showed.

That accounted for 31.4 percent of the P2.071-trillion budget for departments and offices as well as special purpose funds for their immediate needs.

The 2016 outlay is worth P3.002-trillion. The balance of P930.7 billion is in the form of automatic appropriations used mainly for debt servicing, retirement and pension for state workers and revenue share of local government units.

An NCA is that one last document presented by agencies to the Bureau of the Treasury to get checks. Once encashed with government banks, funds are deemed disbursed.

“I do expect them to continue to spend to complete projects before (President) Aquino bows out,” said Nicholas Antonio Mapa, economist at Bank of the Philippine Islands.

“But at least this is a very different case from 2010 where coffers were emptied and spent prior to the turnover of power,” he said in a phone interview.

For the past five years, the Aquino government has been criticized for persistent underspending partly blamed for a slowdown in growth to 5.8 percent last year.

The DBM, in turn, has repeatedly said it is the line agencies which are not spending fast despite getting around 92 percent of their budgets already as of April.

Of the P650.27 billion NCA releases as of April, only P574.44 billion was actually disbursed.

The remaining P20.84 billion represented unencashed checks, P54.98 billion accounts for NCAs not yet utilized, while nearly P76 billion sat at agency bank accounts.

NCA utilization rate was pegged at 92 percent, slowing down from 96 percent in the first quarter.

The Commission on Elections topped agencies with 100 percent utilization as it spent more before the presidential elections.

“There has been very little trouble allocating funds to agencies. The real bottleneck has been in line agencies’ ability to encash and disburse,” Mapa said.

He added he expects the next government to continue reforms to speed up spending.