Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III (Photo: AFP/VNA) Hanoi (VNA) – Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III signed a national budget of 3,002 billion peso (63 billion USD) for 2016 on December 22.
The 2016 budget is the largest in the Philippines’s history and is 15.2 percent higher than the 2,606 billion peso (55 billion USD) sum in 2015.
According to the President, the budget for infrastructure will account for 5 percent of the country’s GDP, 1 percent higher than the 2015 rate.
The large portion of the budget will be spent on social services, with 1,106 billion peso (23 billion USD), followed by economic services, including infrastructure, agriculture, transportation and telecommunication, with 829.6 billion peso (17 billion USD).
In 2016, the Government plans a record spending of 25 billion peso (528.3 million USD) to purchase destroyers and surveillance planes to improve its monitoring of marine boundary.
The draft national budget for 2016 was approved by the parliament on December 17.-VNA
