BSP grants another P540B loan to nat’l gov’t for COVID-19 response

MANILA, Philippines — The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas has granted the government a new loan of P540 billion to augment its budgetary needs as the coronavirus pandemic remains to be in effect.

BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno on Wednesday said the Monetary Board granted the advance credit last Dec. 28.

“The government needs it. Because of COVID-19, revenues went down and are hard to come by, but, at the same time, there are huge expenditure demands on the part of the national government,” he said in a Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum.

“In the meantime that they do not have the taxes and the cash to pay for the COVID-related programs then we lent them P540 billion,” Diokno added.

Diokno said the loan will have zero interest.

This is the second time the BSP has agreed to lend the government P540 billion since it approved a loan request for the same amount in October last year.

Diokno added that the BSP has also remitted to the national delivery a dividend of P40.5 billion, which he said, is about 30% of the total dividends of the whole government corporations.

In March last year, BSP unveiled a massive stimulus program for the national government’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic, saying it would lend as much as P300 billion to the Bureau of the Treasury for this purpose.

EDV