The government’s budget deficit in July declined 13 percent to P75.3 billion from a gap P86.4 billion year-on-year, amid the 9.25-percent growth in revenue collection and the 3.43-percent acceleration in government spending, the Bureau of the Treasury said Friday.
In a statement, the Treasury said the figure brought the budget deficit in the first seven months to P117.9 billion, down 58 percent from P279.4 billion in the same period last year.
Nicholas Mapa, senior economist of ING Bank Manila, said the government started the second half of the year “on the right foot,” showing a decent pickup in expenditure by 3.4 percent while revenue collection remained strong at 9.3 percent.
“With the budget back online, government expenditures were up 23 percent from June and 3.4 percent up from the July 2018’s spending spree where national government spending was up 34 percent,” Mapa said.
He said with the administration looking to chase a 6-percent growth for 2019, the July numbers mirrored the “stark drawdown in the funds parked with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas with the Treasury Single Account seeing a decrease of roughly P100 billion.”
Data showed that government revenues in July rose 9.25 percent year-on-year to P264.1 billion. The cumulative revenues from January to July also climbed to P1.81 trillion from the P1.652 trillion raised in the same period last year.
Tax revenues, comprising 89.70 percent of the total collections for the period, grew 9.9 percent or P145.4 billion year-on-year.
The Bureau of Internal Revenue collected P180.3 billion for the month, increasing 9.96 percent or P16.3 billion over the 2018 level. Year-to-date revenues of P1.246.7 billion are up from last year’s collection of P1.128 trillion by 10.47 percent.
Collections by the Bureau of Customs reached P54.6 billion in July, a 4.79-percent increase from the P52.1 billion registered in the same month in 2018. Cumulatively, BOC’s total collection of P357.7 billion in the first seven months improved as well by 7.88 percent or P26.1 billion compared to actual collections in the same period last year.