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THE
consolidated public sector, or CPS, eyed originally as a
surplus reaching P36 billion this year, should revert to
a deficit totaling more than P25 billion instead.
A much more encompassing barometer of
public-sector health, the CPS tracks the fiscal
positions of the national government and all its
agencies and instrumentalities.
“The consolidated public sector was
reprogrammed to incur a deficit of around P25.6 billion
this year instead of the surplus of P36 billion,”
Finance Undersecretary Gil Beltran told reporters.
According to Beltran, this was the
scenario drawn up at the Cabinet-level Development
Budget Coordination Committee after the economic
managers recast their targets in which the national
government should also incur a deficit of P75 billion.
He said the anticipated deficit of the
National Food Authority (NFA) resulting from its
rice-subsidy activities this year played a key part in
the broad public-sector budgetary shortfall.
The NFA was seen to incur a deficit of
over P43 billion this year, or 153 percent more than its
year-ago shortfall of just P17 billion.
Subsidies as a whole were seen to total
at least P10.1 billion this year from last year’s P27.3
billion. Also seen to incur a deficit this year was the
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), which already “lost”
P89.2 billion last year—in transactions at the foreign-
exchange market that formed part of efforts to stabilize
the peso, at that time appreciating by 19 percent.
In its effort to dampen the local
currency’s rise, the BSP bought more or less $15 billion
from the market, apart from engaging in other
liquidity-sapping activities which forced it to declare
losses rather than gains last year.
Nevertheless, the state-owned pension
firms were seen to remain in the black and sustain their
profitability that allowed them to report aggregate
earnings totaling P41.73 billion last year, Beltran
said.
The various government financial
institutions (GFIs), mainly the Development Bank of the
Philippines and Land Bank of the Philippines, were
similarly seen to continue to post positive results.
The GFIs reported combined earnings
totaling P7.89 billion last year. |
