WE join Senators Koko Pimentel, Risa Hontiveros, Imee Marcos and Bato de la Rosa who expressed concern over the ballooning national debt and who are questioning the PBBM administration’s excessive reliance on borrowings to cover the country’s widening fiscal deficits. The economic team of DOF Secretary Ben Diokno revealed staggering…
WE join Senators Koko Pimentel, Risa Hontiveros, Imee Marcos and Bato de la Rosa who expressed concern over the ballooning national debt and who are questioning the PBBM administration’s excessive reliance on borrowings to cover the country’s widening fiscal deficits. The economic team of DOF Secretary Ben Diokno revealed staggering debt numbers for 2024: total national debt to reach P15.8 trillion , with 11.6 percent of the national budget going into interest payments.
The reality is that debt is a life-and-death issue for the nation. In 1980-1982, the unpayable debt accumulated by the martial-law government of President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. triggered a banking crisis and an economic RECESSION. In 1983, the government defaulted on its debt payments. This led to a crisis in the letters of credit, runaway peso devaluation, capital flight, bankruptcies of factories and businesses, and massive surge in poverty and joblessness.
If so, they should be extra wary of the way Secretaries Ben Diokno, Arsenio Balisacan and Amenah Pangandaman are engineering and justifying a debt-driven economic program similar to what Ministers Cesar Virata and Gerardo Sicat, with the support of the IMF-World Bank, did in the 1970s. The latter were warned in the late 1970s that the country was over-borrowing and was becoming heavily dependent on external loans. The external debt of $2 billion in 1972 ballooned into $20 billion in 1980-1981.
As outlined above, the economy is a picture of mal-development. It is an economy that has no industrial and agricultural legs to stand on. Since 1995, the country has become a net agriculture-importing country, unable to produce enough food for its people. Since the 1980s, there has been an erosion of the country’s industrial base. As a result of the foregoing, the informal economy has become the main catch basin for the country’s work force. A study by Dr.
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