Philippines records fourth monthly budget surplus of the year

The Philippines came back to budget surplus in August as the government recorded spare money brought by strong tax and customs collections, Finance Secretary Margarito Teves said Monday.

A budget surplus of 14.3 billion pesos (286,000 U.S. dollars) was recorded by the government in August, Teves told reporters in a statement.

This was the Philippines' fourth surplus this year, after the government had surpluses in April, May and June, according to Teves.

However, for the first eight months of the year, the government still remained in deficit. It had a budget gap of 34.2 billion pesos (684,000 U.S. dollars) during the period, the official said.

The country aims to deliver a deficit below the projected 125 billion pesos (2.5 billion U.S. dollar), or nearly 2 percent of its GDP by the end of this year.

It had a fiscal gap of 146.5 billion pesos (2.9 billion U.S. dollars) in 2005, which was 2.7 percent of GDP.

Source: Xinhua