The national government’s gross borrowings in the first five months of the year declined by 47.64 percent to P924.43 billion, data released by the Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) showed.
According to the latest cash operations report posted on the BTr website, the government’s gross borrowings in January to May was lower than the P1.77 trillion raised a year ago.
Gross domestic borrowings for the period accounted for the bigger chunk at P644.82 billion, down 57.37 percent from the year ago level of P1.51 trillion.
Of the said amount, P446.45 billion is in fixed rate treasury bonds, while P457.8 billion was accounted for by retail treasury bonds.
Meanwhile, a net redemption of P259.43 billion was recorded in treasury bills.
The BTr data showed that gross external borrowings for the period rose by 10.5 percent to P279.61 billion from P253.04 billion a year ago.
Project loans totaled to P44.66 billion while P89.08 billion was from program loans.
The Philippine government also raised P117.33 billion from the global bond issuance in March and P28.55 billion from Samurai bonds.
In May alone, the government recorded a net redemption of P258.97 billion, versus the P112.19 billion in gross borrowings a year ago.
Gross external borrowings rose to P11.71 billion from the P7.79 billion posted in the same period in 2021.
A net redemption of P270.68 billion was posted on the local side, versus the P104.4 billion in gross domestic borrowings recorded in May a year ago, as the national government paid in full its outstanding P300 billion provisional advances to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) in May, well in advance of the June 11, 2022, actual maturity date.
Earlier this month, the BTr reported the national government’s total outstanding debt stood at P12.5 trillion as of end-May 2022.
The total debt decreased by 2.1 percent from the previous month’s level of P12.76 trillion, which the BTr said was primarily due to the repayment of provisional advances from the BSP. The debt level however is up 12.9 percent from the previous year’s level of P11.07 trillion.
Of the total debt stock, 30.7 percent was sourced externally while 69.3 percent were domestic borrowings.
Domestic debt amounted to P8.67 trillion as of May, 3 percent lower compared to the end-April 2022 level.
The BTr said this resulted from the P300 billion repayment to the BSP which was partially tempered by the net issuance of government securities. External debt meanwhile was 0.1 percent higher from the previous month at P3.83 trillion.
“For May, the increment in external debt was attributed to the impact of local and foreign currency fluctuations against the US dollar amounting to an additional P5.63 billion and P9.41 billion, respectively,” the BTr said.
“These more than offset the effects of net repayment of external obligations amounting to P12.05 billion,” it added.
