The government should come up with a "strategic catch-up plan" for quick spending of government agencies' budget allocation in order to "pump prime" the country's economy, said Senator Win Gatchalian on Friday.
Gatchalian's remark stemmed from noticing that the slow economic growth rate at 2.3 percent in the second quarter of the year—which he said was due to the government's underspending.
The senator noted a government spending contracted by 7.1 percent in the second quarter of 2023 from a year earlier.
"It's forgivable if the headwinds were coming from the outside such as a slowdown in the growth of China or the Ukraine invasion, but looking at the components of our GDP (gross domestic product) growth, government spending is something that we can control. However, we're not spending fast enough and it affected our growth," Gatchalian lamented.
He was pertaining to the increase of budget by 9 percent.
"But we cannot even spend as quickly as possible and it affected our growth," he said.
During the recent Senate briefing on the proposed P5.768 trillion national budget of the Development Budget Coordination Committee for 2024, Gatchalian questioned the government's plan as to how to catch up on its spending to help propel the domestic economy to grow by at least 6.6 percent in the second half of the year so that full-year GDP expansion could reach the 6 percent target.
"This catch-up plan, are these hard commitments by implementing agencies or just loose conversation? Because if it's a written document, I would like to see that written document," he asked.
In response, Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman told Gatchalian that the Department of Budget and Management has already issued a circular order— directing all government agencies to submit by 15 September their respective catch-up plans "to address bottlenecks and reach their respective financial targets for the year."
Gatchalian, meanwhile, sought copies of these catch-up plans from various government agencies. collated by the DBM.
"Submit to us the document so we can push them to spend faster. We want to push the different agencies to implement faster because it's affecting the entire economy," he told Pangandaman.
Gatchalian also took note of the delay in payments that the government is supposed to make, including payments for state universities and colleges.