INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
Gross borrowings of the Marcos administration posted a double-digit decline in November on the back of the government’s weak appetite for local financing, the Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) reported.
Data from the latest cash operations report of the BTr showed gross financing in November amounted to P65 billion, down by 48 percent compared with a year ago.
This brought the 11-month borrowings of the state to P2.49 trillion, 19 percent higher on an annual basis.
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The year-to-date financing also accounted for 96.9 percent of the Marcos administration’s P2.57-trillion borrowing plan for 2024, which is needed to plug an estimated budget hole of P1.52 trillion or 5.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
Dissecting the report of the Treasury, the government raised P48.9 billion in domestic financing in November.
Treasury bonds
This was 60 percent lower compared with a year ago, when the state had borrowed P15 billion during its maiden sale of “tokenized” treasury bonds apart from its regular peso debt offerings.
The BTr might have also front-loaded some onshore borrowings late last year in anticipation of higher interest rates.
In November, proceeds from the weekly auction of Treasury bills hit P19 billion, while the sale of fixed rate Treasury bonds gave the government P30 billion.
In the first 11 months, onshore borrowings went up by 16 percent to P1.91 trillion, inching closer to the target domestic financing for this year of P1.92 trillion.
Meanwhile, the government borrowed P16.2 billion from external sources in November, significantly higher than the P4.4 billion offshore financing it had raised a year ago. This consisted of project loans amounting to P8.7 billion and P7.5 billion in program loans.
That sent the year-to-date gross external financing to P582.4 billion, up by 26 percent and accounting for over 90 percent of the P646.1 billion that the Marcos administration had hoped to borrow from foreign creditors this year.
In 2025, the government plans to borrow P2.55 trillion from creditors at home and abroad to bridge a projected budget gap of P1.54 trillion, or equivalent to 5.3 percent of the country’s GDP. INQ