Gov’t borrowings up 22% in January

The bigger volume of debt paper sold locally in January increased government borrowings by over a fifth to P47.7 billion that month, latest data from the Bureau of the Treasury showed.

The combined gross domestic and external borrowings of the national government in January jumped 22 percent from P39.1 billion a year ago.

The amount borrowed from local sources at the start of the year totaled P27.7 billion, up from P19 billion in January last year.

In January, the Treasury issued P14.9 billion in fixed-rate T-bonds, on top of netting P12.8 billion from the sale of T-bills.

Gross external financing, meanwhile, slightly went down to P19.9 billion from a year ago’s P20 billion.

The bulk of foreign borrowings that month were program loans worth P15.1 billion, while P4.9 billion came from a project loan.

The Treasury has been raising its domestic borrowing program in the past few quarters in order to fund the growing national budget and finance the Duterte administration’s massive “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure program.

The Treasury already announced it would be selling P325 billion in government securities for the second quarter, larger than the first-quarter program of P240 billion.

Last December, the Cabinet-level Development Budget Coordination Committee raised to 26 percent of total the share of external borrowings in 2018 from 20 percent previously, in line with the dollar, panda and samurai bond offerings for this year.

In January, the Philippines sold a total of $2 billion in 10-year dollar-denominated global bonds at a coupon rate of 3 percent.

In March, 1.46 billion renminbi or about P12 billion in three-year panda bonds were issued in China at a 5-percent yield.

The government also planned to sell between $500 million and $700 million in yen-denominated samurai bonds in Japan before yearend.

Last year, the national government’s gross borrowings jumped 78 percent to P901.7 billion from P507 billion in 2016.

External borrowings from multilateral lenders’ program and project loans and the government’s global bond issuance rose to P168.1 billion in 2017 from 2016’s P149.5 billion.

Borrowings from domestic sources via treasury bills and bonds issued more than doubled to P733.6 billion last year from P357.5 billion in 2016.