The Philippine economy likely grew 6 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, on robust infrastructure and election spending, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said Thursday.
“We expect GDP [gross domestic product] to settle at 6 percent for the first quarter,” Abad told The Standard.
He said higher government spending on infrastructure probably boosted growth in the first three months of the year. The gross domestic product expanded 5 percent in the first quarter of 2015.
“We should have good first-quarter growth bolstered by the high obligation rate of the DPWH [Department of Public Works and Highways] and by election spending,” Abad said.
The economy posted a weaker-than-expected growth in the first quarter of 2015, dragged down by government’s underspending, before growth settled at 5.8 percent for the whole 2015.
Data showed DPWH obligated 44 percent or P211-billion of its P479-billion allotment in the first quarter, an increase of 12 percent from the 32-percent obligation rate over the same period last year.
The agency also utilized 98 percent of its cash allocation in the first quarter of 2016, resulting in disbursements of P55 billion.
“We laud DPWH’s successful efforts to ensure the continuity of their projects before the election ban took effect. These promising figures for obligations and NCA utilization rates suggest that public construction will continue to drive growth upwards in the first quarter of 2016 as it did last year,” Abad said.
“I also want to emphasize that the P205 billion—or 65 percent of the total allotment—was obligated for regional projects before the start of the election ban. This means that DPWH will continue to improve local infrastructure uninterrupted throughout the year,” he said.
The Budget Department said about P1.49 trillion of total budget for agencies were already released in the January to March period, comprising 91.8 percent of the total P1.62 trillion budget.
This brought total releases to 82.3 percent of the P3.002-trillion national budget for 2016 or a 0.7-percent increase over allotment releases over the same period last year.