Jose Isidro Camacho, secretary of finance of the Philippines, is a former investment banker - he was Deutsche Bank's country head in the Philippines from 1999-2001. He talks to Euromoney's Chris Cockerill about what the Philippine government must do to regain the market's trust.
The Philippines missed its budget deficit target by a wide margin last year. You have set a new target for this year but many are sceptical you can hit even this. The challenge for us is to address the issue and work towards delivering. But we need to be a little analytical about last year. The performance last year was diverse. In the first seven months there was a 4.6% decline in revenues collected by the Bureau of Internal Revenues compared with the previous year. In the last five months there was a 9.9% improvement on the previous year. These are big swings. The point we are making is that the second half of the year was so much better and we have to maintain that level of performance. And we are on a better track compared with last year.
So the monthly deficit will be more in line with the target that you have set? Yes.