MANILA, Philippines – State agencies are now holding roughly P1.5 trillion of their respective budgets, handed out to them automatically when the 2016 national outlay took effect last Friday.
“With the GAA-as-release-document, it means that 90 percent of the budget of agencies can immediately be obligated without waiting for the DBM to issue allotments,” Budget Secretary Florencio Abad told The STAR.
According to data from the Department of Budget and Management, departmental budgets under the General Appropriations Act (GAA) amounted to P1.66 trillion.
Departmental budgets accounted for 55 percent of the total P3-trillion outlay signed by President Aquino last Dec. 22.
Budget released means agencies are now free to incur obligations by contracting products and services. Once obligated, agencies would still need to secure notices of cash allocation (NCA) from the DBM.
NCAs, in turn, are given to the Bureau of the Treasury, which issues checks to pay for government services. Once encashed and paid to contractors, the amount is deemed disbursed.
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“The introduction of the GAA-as-release-document us-
hered in a budget regime in which the GAA is the primary fund release document,” Abad.
“That is, agency budgets are practically released the moment the national budget is enacted,” he added.
According to the GAA or RA 10717, the 10 agencies with the largest allocations were the departments of education (P437 billion), public works and highways (P400 billion), national defense (P175 billion), interior and local government (P154 billion), health (P128 billion), social welfare and development (P111 billion), agriculture (P94 billion), transportation and communications (P48 billion), finance (P33 billion), and environment and natural resources (P25 billion).
The Aquino administration has been criticized for persistently falling below their spending targets despite double-digit growth in revenues.
As of September last year, expenditures of P1.63 trillion was 14 percent below the P1.9 trillion programmed for the nine-month period, Bureau of the Treasury data showed.
As far as the 2015 budget is concerned, DBM figures have showed that 96 percent or P2.5 trillion of the P2.6-trillion outlay was already released as of November.
The budget chief had earlier said that historically, no budget is released 100 percent. He said for the Aquino administration, budgetary releases have averaged 98 percent since 2010.
“No budget is ever released 100 percent. That is like being able to perfectly predict what your total needs are a year before you incur them,” he said last week.
The 2016 budget represents a 15 percent increase from the previous year.
