PRESIDENT Arroyo yesterday said she has ordered a "surge" or frontloading of infrastructure spending for the first quarter to shield the Philippine economy from the US economic slowdown.

"We are focused like a laser pointed on the infrastructure boom and expansion of public services and not on politics," Arroyo told an energy summit at the Mall of Asia in Pasay City.

She said the Philippines has matured and diversified its economy in the past years such that it has grown "resilient to major economic disruptions."

In a separate speech at the kick off of the Chinese New Year celebration at the Manila Hotel Monday night, Arroyo said the "surge" in infrastructure spending would be worth P200 billion from the national government, government corporations and local governments and would involve 3,000 kilometers of roads and 10,000 school buildings.

At the energy summit, Arroyo said her economic managers are "having problems" with the proposal of presidential economic adviser and Albay Gov. Jose Salceda for a P75 billion stimulus package to soften the impact of the US slowdown because it would mean deferring the target of a balanced budget this year and incurring a P75 billion deficit.

She said the economic managers feared that the deficit would be inflationary.

"So while they continue to debate about submitting a supplemental budget, what we do is frontload the budget that we have. Because if indeed the volatility is short and sharp, let’s do the pump priming now and hope by the end of the quarter the world will be back to normal and we would not have suffered at all from it," she said.

She said for the rest of the month, she will be breaking ground on projects to frontload the "surge." – Regina Bengco