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DUE to losses incurred by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) last
year, the country’s public sector registered a smaller surplus
than earlier announced, the Department of Finance said Thursday.
In a statement, Finance Secretary Margarito
Teves said the BSP’s P89.22 billion in losses reduced the public
sector’s surplus to P36.4 billion from the earlier estimate of P97
billion.
The central bank incurred losses from absorbing
the excess foreign exchange to keep the peso from rising too fast
last year. The local currency shot up by 19 percent, making it
Asia’s best performer. Exporters and overseas Filipino workers (OFWs)
however had been clamoring for measures to slow down the peso’s
rise, which has eroded their earnings.
The central bank intervenes intermittently in
the spot market, buying dollars in a process called sterilization,
to temper the peso’s gains. It enters into currency swap
arrangements with banks so the foreign exchange is not converted
into pesos and adds to the money supply, a brisk growth in which is
inflationary.
Despite the BSP let-down, the latest
public-sector budget condition is a 231-percent improvement compared
with the P5.3 billion enjoyed in 2006.
This means that the country’s public agencies
as a group required less borrowing, thus easing the pressure on
interest rates, which have dipped to record lows in recent months.
The surplus is 1.2 percent of the country’s
gross domestic product, which is the amount of goods and services
produced locally. The fiscal surplus is likewise better than the
government’s target of an P80.8- billion deficit for the period.
The 14 monitored non-financial government owned
or controlled corporations (GOCCs) posted a combined surplus of
P37.8 billion, while the social security institutions, state-run
financial institutions, and local governments earned surpluses of
P55.7 billion, P7.889 billion and P32.943 billion, respectively.
“The huge surplus of the 14 [GOCCs] was mainly
due to governance reform, which enhanced the ability of the
corporations to carry out greater financial discipline and better
resources management, and lessen their dependence on subsidy,” the
finance department said.
-- Chino S. Leyco
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