The country’s revenue effort rose to 17.1 percent in the first half of the year, and is one of the highest among selected economies in Asia, the country’s finance chief said.
Finance Secretary Ralph Recto said the Philippines is on track to meet its fiscal program for 2024 on the back of the government’s robust revenue effort and manageable deficit level during the first half of the year.
“So far, we are on track to meet our fiscal program for the year, having already achieved half of our targets,” he said at the 2025 National Budget Deliberations in the Senate of the Philippines yesterday.
As of mid-year, total revenues grew by 15.6 percent to P2.15 trillion.
Recto credited this feat through digitalization, strict enforcement and plugging of leakages in the tax system, especially from e-commerce.
“This robust revenue performance placed us among Asia’s top revenue-to-GDP ratios at 17.1 percent for the first half of the year. And this is above our full-year target of 16.1 percent,” Recto said.
In the same period a year ago, the country’s revenue effort stood at 16.2 percent.
Meanwhile, in the first semester of 2024, expenditure-to-GDP stood at 21.9 percent in the first half of the year, as expenditures also grew by 14.6 percent in the same period, reaching P2.76 trillion.
During the briefing, Recto likewise assured the members of the Senate that the government is continuously managing the country’s debt according to the highest standards of fiscal discipline.
Recto said there is no cause for concern regarding the Philippine government’s total outstanding debt because the size of the country’s economy is large enough to allow the government to generate without difficulty the resources needed to meet its debt obligations.
He said with the government’s refined Medium-Term Fiscal Program, the country’s deficit and debt will gradually decline in a realistic manner while creating more jobs, increasing people’s incomes, and decreasing poverty in the process.
