The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has issued a circular regarding the submission of agencies’ spending catch-up plans to facilitate the budget execution for the remaining time this year.
This comes as the government’s six-month spending performance fell below program by 6.6 percent, while the contraction in government spending, among others, also dragged the economy’s second quarter growth.
The circular seeks to ascertain the underlying causes or reasons for the spending underperformance and undertake measures to address them.
Government agencies were also instructed to conduct data analysis on a periodic basis for the identification of agency programs and projects with historical trends of low disbursement rates.
This is to compare actual performance versus specified measures and targets and identify leading indicators for each program, sub-program and project to signal the need for catch-up plans for delays or underperformance.
Agencies shall then come up with delivery and execution strategies to address actual implementation bottlenecks of these programs and projects, and submit to the DBM the following: latest available financial and physical accomplishments; status of major/flagship programs/projects under fiscal years 2022 and 2023, particularly those with significant budgetary allocations; and catch-up plans to address the bottlenecks and reach their respective physical and financial performance targets for the year.
“These measures are to ensure efficiency in budget utilization to achieve maximum benefits and high multiplier effects for the economy,” Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman said.
The reports will then become the basis of the DBM for the release of the balance of programmed appropriation and revision of plans/targets, as necessary.
“We consider budget utilization rates (BUR) in evaluating the absorptive capacity of agencies. We view low utilization rate as the agency’s limited capacity to utilize new funds. However, those agencies who need to increase their utilization rates have promised to produce catch-up plans during the budget deliberations. So, we hope that their BURs will increase by then,” the budget chief said.
