MANILA - Lower-than-target tax collections have resulted in the need for the government to borrow more. In the first five months of the year, the country's total borrowings have jumped 20 percent, according to government data.

With the government's two main revenue-generating agencies--the Bureau of Internal Revenue and Bureau of Customs--not being able to meet their collection targets, the task of raising funds (through borrowings) to plug the two agencies' deficiencies has fallen on the Bureau of Treasury.

In a data released on Wednesday, the Treasury reported that government's total borrowings as of May amounted to P258.6 billion--20 percent or P42.55 billion more than the P216.05 billion level in the same period last year.

In the first five months of 2009 alone, government borrowed P48.74 billion. In the same period last year, it borrowed only P17.52 billion to finance the budget deficit.

Last January, the government doubled its foreign commercial borrowing to $1.5 billion from $750 million due to the expected wider budget deficit in 2009. Way back in January, the deficit was pegged at P102 billion.

Now the official target for the budget deficit has swollen to P250 billion. Last Tuesday, the government announced that the P11.4 billion deficit incurred in May has brought the fiscal shortfall for the first five months of the year to P123.2 billion, 556.2 percent higher than P18.8 billion in the same period in 2008. Although it was nearly half of the government's revised full-year ceiling of P250 billion, it was still well within the deficit target of P155.1 billion for the first six months.

To reduce the need for more borrowings, the Finance Department is hoping to raise more than P20 billion from the privatization proceeds of two big-ticket assets.