Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman is hoping for a better budget utilization performance among government agencies at the start of the year.
“The learning curve is over for government officials as they have already organized their respective… procurement offices. So hopefully, for the first quarter, the utilization rate is high among the agencies in the government,” Pangandaman said during the Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum yesterday.
Last year, the underspending of government agencies dragged growth in the second quarter of the said year.
This pushed the government to implement spending catch-up plans.
“Most of them were able to award their projects end of the year last year, so we are hoping that they are already used to the procurement and implementation (processes),” the budget chief said.
Pangandaman also pointed out during the forum that the 2024 budget is the first budget already prepared by the current administration, thus the current set officials were more involved in the crafting of the budget.
The cash utilization rate of government agencies as of end-November 2023 stood at 93 percent.
Pangandaman expects this figure to improve further as of December, as she mentioned that there were many releases during the last month of the year.
In 2022, the utilization ratio was 98 percent.
The budget chief hopes that it will be a higher figure for 2023 due to the catch-up plans.
The government has to work on a budget of P5.768 trillion for this year.
Recently, the DBM already issued the budget call for 2025, as guidance for the preparation of next year’s budget.
The proposed national budget for fiscal year 2025 is set at P6.12 trillion, which is equivalent to 20.5 percent of GDP.
