MANILA, Philippines - The government expects to raise P1.335 trillion in revenues next year or P10 billion more than the original projection of P1.325 trillion, according to the latest assumptions approved by the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) last week.
The additional P10 billion will come from privatization proceeds, Finance Undersecretary Gil Beltran said during the weekend.
Originally, the Department of Finance planned to raise only P2.5 billion from the sale of state-owned assets next year but Beltran said the government’s privatization group has committed to sell P10 billion more in 2010.
Crisanta Legaspi, Finance Undersecretary for privatization, earlier said the government would be making an inventory of its real estate assets nationwide to find out which ones could be sold to developers next year.
The DBCC, meanwhile, has also increased next year’s expenditures to P1.569 trillion from the previous assumption of P1.534 trillion as the government prepares for another economic resiliency package worth at least P200 billion.
The latest assumptions have led to a revised budget deficit of P233.4 billion from P208.4 billion previously.
The DBCC met last Thursday to approve the new numbers.
Fiscal authorities said there was a need to widen the deficit so the government could spend more next year and help the economy prepare for “global recovery.”
The DBCC also said the economy may grow anywhere from 2.6 percent to 3.6 percent in 2010, higher than the revised projected growth range for the year of 0.8 percent to 1.8 percent.
With gross domestic product (GDP) projected at a range of 2.6 percent to 3.6 percent for 2010, the DBCC approved a budget of P1.541 trillion for next year.
This is P115 billion or eight percent higher than the 2009 budget of P1.426 trillion and is consistent with the goal of reducing the budget deficit to 2.8 percent of GDP from 3.2 percent of GDP in 2009, Budget Secretary Rolando Outgoing Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) director general Ralph Recto said the budget also takes into account another economic stimulus package of roughly P200 billion, smaller than the resiliency package for this year of P330 billion.
In June, the DBCC agreed to raise the 2009 budget deficit to P250 billion or 3.2 percent of GDP from P199.2 billion or 2.5 percent of GDP which was approved in April.
The DBCC also scaled down the projected GDP growth for 2009 to a range of 0.8 percent to 1.8 percent from the previous range of 3.1 percent to 4.1 percent.