The Duterte administration’s thrust to ramp up public spending has resulted in much lower state underspending, Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno said on Friday. We only underspent by P6 billion for the first half of 2017,” Diokno said during The Manila Times 6th Business Forum at the Marriott Hotel in Pasay. In contrast, he said that previous results — albeit for the full year — was underspending hitting P302 billion in 2014, P328 billion in 2015 and P96.3 billion last year. Diokno noted that this year, government targets to spend P858 billion or 5.4 percent of gross domestic product on infrastructure development this year. The Duterte administration’s “Build, Build, Build” program was the subject of Friday’s forum, which carried the theme “Philippines 2021: Toward the Golden Age of Infrastructure.

Source: Manila Times August 18, 2017 16:52 UTC