Despite huge spending cuts, Noy wants bigger budget 06/21/2011

NEARLY P2T ALLOCATION FOR 2012 BEING EYED

Despite huge spending cuts, Noy wants bigger budget

06/21/2011
Despite racking up a record deficit last year of P314 billion and later employing a simplistic solution of massive underspending to narrow down the budget gap at the expense of basic services, coupled with the delays in the P200-billion flagship private-public partnership (PPP) infrastructure build-up of his administration this year, President Aquino wants the budget increased by up to 12 percent to P1.8 trillion by next year.

Economic managers made the proposal during Saturday’s meeting of the inter-agency Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC).

If delays in government spending mainly on the PPP support fund in the budget that would likely be converted into savings by the end of the year, the available funds plus the proposed budget will give Aquino nearly a P2 trillion budget at his disposal by next year.

That would raise a lot of questions since the following 2013 would be an election year. The practice in the past was to cut down on spendings on an inflated budget to attain huge savings for an election year that would all be at the discretion of the President..... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/headlines/20110621hed1.html