grievance are told to fill up the form and submit to the barangay social welfare staff to expedite their inclusion in the master list.
THE Department of Finance (DOF) so far secured $15.49 billion (or roughly P752.3 billion) in loans and grants from foreign lenders to fund the government’s response to Covid-19 pandemic.
Based on the list provided by the DOF on its web site as of April 8, the total amount already includes the US$1.2-billion (around P58.5 billion) financing it recently secured from multilateral lenders for the country’s purchase of Covid-19 vaccines.
Of the total $15.49 billion in financing, the DOF said it raised $13.35 billion in budgetary support financing but so far $12.31 billion has been disbursed to the government.
The amount for budgetary support financing came from Asian Development Bank, World Bank, Agence Française de Développement, Export-Import Bank of Korea-Economic Development Cooperation Fund, China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency, and from dollar-denominated global bonds issued by the Philippine government last year.
On top of the budgetary support financing, $2.14 billion in grant and loan financing have been contracted to support various projects to be implemented by agencies involved in Covid-19 response.
However, DOF said figures in the list “are rebased to reflect 2020 average exchange rates.”
For the country’s vaccine purchase, the government recently secured the following loans: $500 million for the Philippines’s Covid-19 Emergency Response Project—Additional Financing (PCERP-AF) from the World Bank; $400-million Second Health System Enhancement to Address and Limit Covid-19 (HEAL 2) under the Asia Pacific Vaccine Facility of the Asian Development Bank and US$300-million HEAL 2 loan from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
The Finance department has also since clarified that the government’s budget for Covid-19 procurement remains at P82.5 billion, of which P70 billion will come from unprogrammed funds that will be unlocked by collecting additional revenues or by securing additional financing from the Philippines’s multilateral partner-institutions.
The national government’s outstanding debt as of end-February this year soared to a new record high of P10.406 trillion as the government continued to borrow more money to respond to the raging Covid-19 pandemic.
Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III earlier said they expect the national government’s debt this year to reach 57 percent of GDP. The country aims to borrow about P3 trillion this year, almost the same amount it borrowed in 2020.
As of end-2020, the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio surged to 54.5 percent—a 14 year-high—coming from a record-low 39.6 percent in the previous year.
Image credits: Bernard Testa