At least doles to the marginalized sector have preconditions.

That’s why they call it the Conditional Cash Transfer program.

But call them whatever you want. To us, they are still subsidies.

And subsidies, as we keep on stressing here, do not make economic sense. Come to think of it, they don’t make common sense at all.

Why? Because it is big money from taxpayers thrown down the drain and into the bottomless pit.

Not only do they not work; they are even counterproductive.           Why again? Because state subsidies to government-owned or -controlled corporations foster inefficiency and invite corruption.

Still, in some perverse version of turbo-charged public expenditure apparently to make up for the massive under-spending this year, the Aquino administration has tripled the money to bail out losing GOCCs.        

The subsidies to GOCCs showed no signs of easing in the first 11 months as the Treasury released P45.2 billion to shore them up.

That amount was nearly three times the P16.32 billion released to those corporations in the same period last year. The financial support to state firms in November alone grew nearly three times to P13.46 billion from P4.68 billion.

The biggest recipient of taxpayers’ money in November was the National Housing Authority with nearly P12.98 billion. Philippine Postal Corp. received P165 million, and the Philippine Coconut Authority P54 million.

The government says it has been stepping up its financial assistance to state agencies whose mandates are poverty alleviation, cheap housing, the provision of health services to indigents, and food security.

The biggest recipient of subsidies in the year through November was the NHA with nearly P15.2 billion. State lender Land Bank of the Philippines received P7.93 billion, and Philippine Health Insurance Corp. P6.62 billion.

Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima said the Aquino administration would be reclassifying state firms and reviewing their assets to determine which might be ripe for privatization. The goal was to determine precisely which firms should be sold and which should continue receiving state support.

Purisima said higher revenues, higher savings from low interest payments, and judicious spending gave the government the ability to spend more for the rest of the year and provide more support to ailing state firms.

Last month, the Finance department said the government incurred a deficit of P96.25 billion as of the end of November, which was well below the programmed spending for the period because the Aquino administration’s efforts to speed up its spending for infrastructure failed to offset its underspending in the first half of the year.

The latest budget gap is significantly lower than the P269.82-billion deficit that was recorded in the same period last year.

The government has programmed a deficit of P300 billion this year, but the economic managers have since said that ceiling might not be breached at all as a result of the lower spending.