Coloma assures gov’t is doing its best to execute 2015 spending program

Communications Secretary Sonny Coloma (Photo: Presidential Communications Operation Office)

MANILA — The Aquino government bids to ensure the recovery of government spending to sustain the strong growth of the domestic economy and achieve the seven to eight percent growth target for 2015-16.

Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. assured this during an interview by state-owned Radyo ng Bayan Saturday.

Analysts have generally lower projections for the economy for this and next year compared to the government targets.

For one, Moody’s Investors Service cut to six percent from 6.5 percent its growth forecast for the country this year due to lower government spending and slower global trade.

Coloma said that the government cannot do something about global trade, thus, it was focusing on how to address and make government spending faster.

These two factors are also the main reason for the drop in domestic growth in the first quarter of the year to 5.2 percent after recovering to 6.6 percent in the last quarter of 2014.

Coloma said that the country continued to have strong trade with other countries so he was hopeful that the slowdown would not greatly affect the domestic economy.

In terms of government spending, the Palace official said the government was exerting extra effort to implement this year’s expenditure program.

”Yung kung ano ang inilaan na pananalapi ay magastos ito sa tamang paraan at sa mga kapaki-pakinabang na mga proyekto para ‘yung benepisyo ng pag-unlad ay maramdaman ng ating mga mamamayan,” he said.

In the first four months of the year, the government registered a budget surplus of Php 135.4 billion.

This after revenues grew faster than expenditures at nine percent and five percent, respectively.

While having a surplus is good, the government has to spend more to ensure that all infrastructure projects programmed for the year would be implemented.

”Yung sinasabing surplus, isa ring indikasyon ‘yan na medyo behind tayo doon sa spending. Kaya ‘yan ang pinagsisikapang pabutihin at paghusayin ng iba’t ibang ahensya ng pamahalaan,” he said.