MANILA, Oct 17: After three consecutive months of surpluses, the Philippines posted a budget deficit of 14.5 billion pesos ($326.3m) in September, the government said on Wednesday.

The September figure brought the cumulative budget deficit for the first nine months to 40 billion pesos, still below the government’s target ceiling of 54 billion for the period, Finance Secretary Margarito Teves said.

This represents about two-thirds of the programmed deficit of 63 billion pesos or 0.9 per cent of GDP for 2007.

“This allowed us to post a budget surplus of 971m pesos in the third quarter, an over-performance of 23.7bn pesos against the programmed deficit of 22.7 billion pesos,” he told reporters.—AFP