MANILA - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has put Manila under close scrutiny again, quizzing officials on Friday about what they plan to do with the deteriorating revenue numbers and the widening budget deficit.

Official sources said there is particular interest in the tax effort, or the government’s ability to collect taxes as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP).

This number was previously seen by the World Bank to return this year to its 2002 level of 12.8%, when the value-added tax rate was allowed to rise to 12% from 10%.

It stood at 14.1% of GDP last year and at 14% the year before.

"The IMF mission team has asked the Department of Finance how it plans to go back to fiscal consolidation, which has unhinged," a senior government official told reporters.

The IMF team, in town for a week-long review under the so-called Article IV of the agreement with member- countries, is keen on discovering the circumstances under which the fiscal numbers could rise.

"They asked the government what it plans to do with the deteriorating tax effort and what its prospects are," according to the official.

There is particular interest on proposed measures on how to lift tax-collection performance and reduce the annual budget gap that already breached the P250-billion ceiling to P266 billion in the first 10 months, officials added.

It was noted that for more than two decades now, Manila has not had a budget surplus except in 1994, due to asset-sale proceeds, and again in 1997 when the hated Comprehensive Tax Reform Program, or CTRP, swung into place. "The issues center on lifting tax collection and reduction in bottom line or the budget deficit," officials reiterated.

On the monetary sector, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. said they have not had trouble with the IMF for some time now.

"The IMF supports our view that there is no urgency for us to implement an exit strategy. They agreed with us on this," he told reporters.

The exit plan pertains to the phased withdrawal of fiscal and monetary measures implemented the past 18 months or so in response to the then-raging global financial and credit crisis started by the United States.

These were growth-boosting liquidity measures intended to support economic growth that have unintended consequences in price and interest- rate movements if handled improperly, for example.

That inflation remained at the mid-point of the forecast range this year is proof that an exit plan was not warranted under the circumstance, Tetangco stressed.

Australia had been the first to implement an exit plan by hiking its policy rates just weeks earlier even as the United States and Japan said it was still "too early" to withdraw their respective fiscal stimulus programs.

India, however, is seen as likely the first among the G-20 countries to unwind its stimulus program.