Share of foreign loans in debt mix to drop

The share of foreign borrowings in the government’s financing program will slide to 14 percent next year from 17 percent this year as the overall cash flow gains from higher revenue collections.

National Treasurer Rosalia V. de Leon told reporters last week that the borrowing mix for 2015 would be 86-percent domestic and 14-percent external as the “mountains of cash” being held by the Bureau of the Treasury would be enough “buffer to sustain expenditures.”

De Leon noted that the government’s revenue collections were on the rise.

As of end-September, the combined collections of the Treasury, the bureaus of Customs and of Internal Revenue totaled P1.42 trillion, up 12.5 percent year-on-year.

Last September, the inter-agency Development Budget Coordination Committee jacked up to 17 percent the share of foreign financing in this year’s borrowing mix from 13 percent previously as the government had to borrow more from multilateral lenders to sustain rehabilitation efforts in areas flattened by super-typhoon “Yolanda” late last year.

With the P167.9-billion “Yolanda” rehabilitation master plan already approved by President Aquino last month, De Leon said this year might end with even higher external borrowing.

Latest Treasury data showed that the government borrowed less the first nine months of 2014. Total government borrowings from January to September totaled P280.1 billion, down 41.4 percent from P477.93 billion in the same nine-month period of 2013.

At the end of September, external borrowings or loans from multilateral lenders reached P94.3 billion. In September alone, foreign borrowings amounted to P5.35 billion.

Domestic borrowings mainly coming from the auction of treasury bills and bonds remained bigger, hitting P185.8 billion during the January-to-September period. Debt paper worth P17.16 billion were issued in the month of September.

De Leon also reiterated that the Treasury was always “on the lookout for market opportunities” in terms of an offshore bond issuance.

She had said that the government might issue Republic of the Philippines or ROP bonds on top of an overseas liability management exercise as part of the programmed $750-million external commercial funding scheduled for next year.

The national treasurer also expressed her support for the approval of the Department of Budget and Management’s proposed P23.34-billion supplemental budget for 2015, which the agency said would be spent mainly on post-“Yolanda” rehabilitation as well as preparations for next year’s hosting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Summit.