CLARK—The international donor community yesterday said the government after fixing the budget should focus on helping the poor.

Bert Hofman, country director of the World Bank and co-chair of the Philippine Development Forum held at Fontana Convention Center here said poverty has worsened despite the record economic growth and that the country’s development partners are in "consensus" that the government should start including the poor in the growth.

"There is a clear recognition of the strong macroeconomic performance attained by the government and they should be congratulated for the fiscal progress, which has been the basis for that performance," Hofman said, at the conclusion of the two-day dialogue among the government, multilateral and bilateral partners, the business community and the civil society here.

"The consensus is that there should now be more focus on poverty because recent poverty numbers show poverty is not going down in line with record growths. So the focus should be inclusive growth, that is getting the poor on board the growth performance," Hofman said.

Compared to the previous years, the goal of raising more revenues now is to enable government to be able to spend more for the poor, primarily through social spending.

But Hofman said if the government must spend more, it should make sure it has the wherewithal to support spending and not sacrifice the fiscal gains.

"It will be best to have extra spending if there are extra revenues so strengthening revenues is important and the government has made a commitment for that," Hofman said.

"It is better to spend from a position of strength. The need for revenues is still there but the purpose of higher revenue is for increased spending," he added.

New tax measures including the increase in the sales tax have allowed the government to raise more revenues, reduce borrowing and the budget deficit, a development that the development partners welcomed positively.

This year, the government is aiming to finally close the gap in the budget. As long as revenue targets can be achieved, government officials said the government is ready to spend more to help the poor.

"What’s the use of a balanced budget if people are hungry," Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya said.

"We won’t hesitate to spend more as long as commitment to revenues is there. We can’t spend more if we can’t collect the taxes," he said.

Andaya said based on the discussions, the country’s development partners said the government may spend more only insofar as it has the commitment to raise more revenues.

"What is important from their point of view is the commitment to revenue. On the expenditure side, we have already proven by our spending pattern in the last two years that we were able to target infrastructure and agriculture. Their question now is over the long term can the government sustain this?" Andaya said.

Unlike last year when the government relied more on privatization to support increased spending, the government should now depend more on recurring sources of income like taxes, something that the development partners want, Andaya said.

"If you spend more and not resolve to collect taxes, that’s a double negative. You can’t get by with it," he said.

Hofman said to enhance revenue collection, the government should work for the increase in the excise tax and the passage of the rationalization of fiscal incentives bill, important pieces of legislation that Congress has put in the backburner in favor of political concerns.