MANILA - The Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) has thrown Finance Secretary Margarito Teves another lifeline, worth P7 billion, within which to help keep the year’s budget deficit in check.

The money—to be paid in cash and in full by GSIS president and general manager Winston Garcia as quickly as Teves can sign the document—represents an escalation in the offer to buy the 103-hectare Food Terminal Inc. (FTI) Complex in Taguig City.

Garcia previously offered to buy the FTI Complex for only P6 billion soon after its sale failed for the second time early in Teves’s term at the helm of the Department of Finance.

“The offer still stands, the P7 billion payable in cash. We will have the formal letter offer delivered to his office on Monday,” Garcia said in a text message on Sunday from Cebu City, where he spends his weekends.

Garcia’s offer is considerably lower than the P13-billion indicative price for which Teves has put up the FTI for sale.

He needs as much as he can generate from the transaction to help him buttress the budget deficit, seen to widen to as much as 4 percent of the gross domestic product, or some P300 billion.

Teves and colleagues at the Cabinet Cluster planned a budget deficit of only P250 billion but have seen that number recently overtaken by increased spending pressure from the massive damage caused by typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng.

Garcia said while he is willing to pay cash, he, nevertheless, plans a due-diligence audit on both the books and physical properties of the FTI Complex to ensure he is acquiring a sound asset.

“This is subject to due-diligence audit, of course,” Garcia said.

Teves previously told reporters he will part with FTI at its indicative price only. But this was before he acknowledged the fiscal space within which he moved has squeezed him tighter at each passing month.

“I don’t know if I can lower the price for FTI. But I need the money within the year,” he said.

This need has driven Teves to pursue three money-generating options that, besides selling state-owned assets, included borrowing from the global market, from the samurai or yen-bond market or buying his foreign-exchange requirements directly from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

Teves had managed to sell $1 billion at the global market early on Saturday morning local time, but it remains unclear whether this was enough to fortify the fiscal sector whose accumulated nine-month deficit already total 84 percent of the full-year goal or P210 billion.

“We have no plan to change the deficit target but we don’t know yet if we can make P250 billion. And as I have said, it has become increasingly difficult [to keep it],” Teves said.