|
By Chino S. Leyco Reporter
THE national government borrowed
more last February compared with a year ago due the booking that
month of half a billion dollars in sovereign bonds or IOUs, Bureau
of Treasury data showed.
In February, government
borrowings rose 20 percent to P58.508 billion from P46.805 billion
in the same period last year, with the treasury bureau completing
its $500-million foreign commercial borrowing program for this year.
Domestic borrowing grew 41.2
percent to P37.678 billion from P22.137 billion last year. Funds
sourced from abroad declined by 15.5 percent to P20.830 billion from
P24.668 billion last year.
The government plans to borrow
P346.18 billion from both foreign and domestic creditors this year,
P98.19 billion lower than the actual borrowings of P444.4 billion
last year.
Finance Secretary Margarito Teves
earlier said the government would likely cut its foreign borrowings
further this year to help Filipinos overseas and exporters cope with
a strong peso.
Teves said the government could
further trim the share of foreign borrowings to 25 percent of the
total from the revised 30 percent.
The government plans to balance
its budget this year, after a sharp cut in its deficit last year.
Last February, the government
incurred a P19-billion fiscal gap, or a reversal of the P11.1
billion surplus in the same period last year.
The deficit last February was
caused by an 8.8 percent drop in revenues to P81.8 billion from the
P89.6 billion in the same period last year, during which revenues
from the sale of the state’s stake in the Philippine
Telecommunications Investment Corp. (PTIC) were booked.
Expenditures grew 28.3 percent to
P100.8 billion from P78.5 billion last year, largely due to higher
interest payments arising from the issuance of Treasury bills to
government financial institutions and local government units.
The February fiscal gap led the
deficit to widen to P32.9 billion in the first two months this year,
or higher than the shortfall of P18.6 billion in the same period
last year.
|
