End-January outstanding gov’t debt hits P5.9T

The outstanding debt of the national government slightly declined month-on-month to P5.9 trillion as of end-January even as the amount was higher than a year ago.

In a statement, the Bureau of the Treasury attributed the 0.9-percent drop from P5.96 trillion in end-December last year to “net redemption of domestic government securities.”

However, the January figure was up 2.6 percent from P5.75 trillion in the same month last year.

As of January, the national government’s domestic debt stood at P3.82 trillion, down 1.6 percent month-on-month and 0.1 percent year-on-year, to account for 64.8 percent of total outstanding obligations.

The Treasury said the month-on-month drop in domestic debt was on the back of “net redemption of government securities amounting to P60.57 billion offsetting the P300 million upward adjustment in the peso value of foreign currency domestic liabilities due to peso depreciation.” The peso weakened to 47.685:$1 at the start of this year from 47.15 last December.

The bulk of domestic obligations amounting to P3.82 trillion were in government securities while P598 million were loans.

In terms of maturity, P3.15 trillion were long term, P399.4 million were medium term and P274 million were short term.

The external debt, meanwhile, increased by 0.3 percent month-on-month and 7.9 percent year-on-year to P2.076 trillion, all of which have long-term maturity.

According to the Treasury, the month-on-month increase in foreign obligations was due to the “impact of peso weakness on dollar-denominated debt that raised the peso value by P23.49 billion, [which] outweighed the net depreciation of third currencies against the dollar and net repayments that reduced the peso value of debt by P4.39 billion and P13.19 billion, respectively.”

Of the outstanding foreign debt, P1.29 trillion were debt securities and P781.8 billion were loans.

As for the national government’s guaranteed obligations, these rose by 1 percent month-on-month and 6 percent year-on-year to P442.5 billion. Ben O. de Vera