Finance Secretary Margarito B. Teves is still optimistic that they could contain the budget deficit to 3.2 percent of gross domestic product this year even without additional borrowing.

“We’re hopeful the deficit will be P250 billion (as programmed). That’s our medium-case scenario,” Teves said. “Our best-case could be lower than P250 billion but I rather we focus on the medium-case scenario,” he stressed, also adding that they are not letting go of their internal best-case deficit possibility, which is lower than 3.2 percent of GDP.

Government’s borrowing program, according to Teves, is very much a movable object at this point since its purpose is to plug the deficit. For next year, the National Government’s borrowing program is $4 billion.

As of end-June, the government has raised $2.25 billion from the sale of global bonds and about $1.1 billion from both program and project loans. Teves said the borrowing program could still change, depending on several factors such as treasury’s cash position and market condition. He however prefers donor financing or loans to commercial borrowing. Last year, the government received $1.5 billion of official development assistance.