Government debt payments—mostly owed to domestic creditors—fell P48 billion to P337 billion from January to May this year, the Bureau of Treasury said Wednesday.
The debt servicing expenses were 14 percent lower compared to P385 billion in the same period in 2011 and come soon after the relative size of the debt payments compared to the gross domestic product fell to a 13-year low of 50.9 percent.
The BoT said the national government spent P262.777 billion to settle obligations to domestic creditors—nearly all of whom are banks and financial institutions like insurance firms.
Foreign debt payments were smaller at P24.999 billion for principal components and P49.416 billion for interest.
The total debt stock as of April 30 stood at P5.075 trillion and consisted mostly of medium and long term tenors.
According to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, most of the country’s $62.9 billion of foreign debt—over 80 percent—have medium and long term maturities, while short term debt are less than 12 percent.
“US dollar-denominated accounts represented nearly half—49.5 percent—of total, Japanese Yen accounts accounted for 25.1 percent, and multi-currency loans from the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, 11.6 percent,” the BSP said in a recent statement.
“The rest of the accounts comprising the 13.8 percent balance were denominated in 18 other currencies,” the BSP also said. — ELR, GMA News
source: gmanetwork.com
