BY ANGELO S. SAMONTE Reporter

President Gloria Arroyo said she signed into law on Monday the P1.54-trillion 2010 national budget, which she hailed as a culmination of her administration’s commitment to reform and development.

She described this year’s budget as “the end of years of hard work and fiscal reforms” and also “the beginning from which the next president can build on the accomplishments of this administration.”

Because of the government’s scarce resources with growing requirements, Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya Jr. said that the 2010 budget seeks to balance social responsibility with fiscal responsibility.

“In this budget, we are saying that we will not break our vow to ramp up social spending, but in doing so we will not be breaking the bank,” he added.

While spending will not be frozen on account of the election season, Andaya said that this would be pursued with utmost prudence and caution. He added that the government would be keeping an eye on the expenditure odometer because it would likely leave some good fiscal numbers behind.

Andaya said that this year’s outlay of P1.54 trillion is 8 percent, or P115 billion higher than last year’s P1.426-trillion budget.

Despite the better budget, however, he warned that it could still prompt a deficit of P233.4 billion. But Andaya said that it was still within the manageable range of 2.8 percent of the GDP (gross domestic product). GDP is the total value of goods and services produced in a country in a year.

But Andaya admitted that any move to pare down the revenue goal of P1.335 trillion this year to P1.284 trillion, as one unofficial outlook presented, will trigger an uptick in the deficit, to P293 billion, or 3.5 percent of GDP.

“This fear of a surging deficit is the reason why congressional earmarks worth P64.6 billion will only be released if Congress can identify new revenue measures that can support such spending,” he said.

This position, Andaya added, was conveyed by President Arroyo in a letter to leaders of Congress notifying them of her signing of the budget and the vetos, comments and observations she had made.

“The idea is that any appropriation must be hitched to a corresponding source of revenue. Because earmarks were not anchored on any funding source, then we are advising Congress to find the ways of funding them,” he said.

Without new revenue measures, the executive branch will have no cash support for the items of appropriations introduced by members of Congress, Andaya added.