The National Government is more confident now that with $1 billion additional funds in its coffers, the P250 billion programmed budget deficit for the year will be kept.

“We’re comfortable,” Finance Secretary Margarito B. Teves said over the weekend. “The recent borrowing we’ve had through the international bonds market is a level of comfort for us because that will take care of the gap, hopefully, for this year.”

Teves added that he is also hoping that the additional cash will “provide (government) a cushion for next year.”

“Now as for the actual deficit number we don’t know we have a range of scenarios of what the deficit will be. (But) with the $1 billion we’re hopeful we could keep the P250 billion deficit program,” he said. Private forecasters both local and foreign have placed the full-year budget deficit anywhere from P270 billion to P330 billion.

For the first nine months of the year, the government had a budget gap of P237.5 billion mainly because expenditures where higher than the revenues collected.