State agencies pick up budget spending

Government agencies picked up the pace of their spending in the first 10 months as they continued to implement catch up measures to fast-track the rollout of projects, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) reported yesterday.

According to the latest data from the DBM, line agencies have utilized almost P2.45 trillion worth of notices of cash allocation (NCA) from January to October, which is equivalent to 93 percent of the P2.64 trillion NCAs released during the period.

The DBM said this is faster than the NCA utilization rate of 81 percent in the same period last year, when P2.34 trillion worth of NCA was utilized by the government.

NCA refers to the disbursement authority issued by the DBM to cover the cash requirements of the operations, programs and projects of government agencies.

“A higher NCA utilization rate demonstrates the capacity of line agencies to quickly disburse their allocated funds and implement their programs and projects,” the DBM said.

Budget Undersecretary Laura Pascua said in a text message that the faster utilization of NCA could be attributed to the catch up measures being implemented to reverse the underspending recorded in the first half, which was due to the budget delay and election ban on public works.

Of the total NCAs released during the period, the DBM said P1.77 trillion was accounted for by line departments. This is equivalent to 91 percent of the P1.96 trillion notices released to agencies as of end-October.

About 97 percent of NCAs released for budgetary support to government-owned and -controlled corporations (GOCCs) were also used up during the period. Meanwhile, allocations released as allotment to local government units were fully utilized.

According to a previous report from the DBM, the national government’s disbursements for the month of September jumped by 39 percent to P415 billion from P298.6 billion in the same month last year.

This brought cumulative government expenditures to P2.63 trillion in the first nine months, which is 5.5 percent up from last year, but 2.1 percent short of program.

Both the Department of Finance (DOF) and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) earlier said these numbers indicate that the government is starting to recover from the impact of the delay in the passage of the 2019 budget.

As a result, economy expanded by 6.2 percent in the third quarter, faster than the six percent recorded in the same quarter last year and 5.5 percent in the previous quarter.

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez also said earlier that state spending is expected to further speed up in the fourth quarter and in 2020, in light of two positive developments in Congress.