The Philippines Department of Budget and Management will be improving its Performance-Informed Budgeting (PIB) system to ensure a more outcome-based budgeting approach in time for next year’s budget cycle.

Traditionally, a mass of numbers and line items are displayed without clarity on where funds are going. The PIB is a budgeting approach that uses performance information to influence where funds will go.

Through this approach, the Government aims to make public expenditure more responsive, transparent and accountable.

With the new PIB system, the Department will take a more ambitious and better-informed approached in crafting next year’s budget, according to Budget Secretary Florencio B. Abad (pictured).

The national budget for 2015 is P2.606 trillion (US$60 billion), a 15.1 per cent increase from last year.

In order to better support the various government agencies’ programmes, the Department plans to improve the PIB system by strengthening the connection between the target and budgetary requirements of each agency.

The new approach also promises to improve inter-agency collaboration and better align agencies’ programmes with the Government’s priorities, such as anti-corruption, financial inclusion, economic growth, sustainability and law and order.