The government sold increasingly large volumes of Treasury securities this year to help finance operations in an economy still hounded by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Data from the Bureau of Treasury (BTr) show the sale of P8.11 trillion worth of government securities in February alone, which was 18.9 percent more than government securities sold a year earlier totaling only P6.82 trillion.
The sale of government securities was in the form of Treasury bills (T-bills) and Treasury bonds (T-bonds) sold weekly by the Bureau of Treasury and undertaken on top of contracting loans from various domestic creditors that include even the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
In January and February this year the BSP extended short-term loans totaling P600 billion to the national government to help fortify the nation’s coffers.
Apart from selling government securities and obtaining loans from local creditors, NG also sold both foreign-currency and peso-denominated bonds to a global audience that on the whole generated just under P2 trillion worth of IOUs in February this year.
These were in the form of US dollar bonds and notes, euro-denominated bonds, Japanese yen bonds, Chinese yuan and peso global bonds.
The sale of just under P2 trillion worth of foreign- and local currency bonds in February represented an escalation in external borrowings by 18.6 percent from only P1.68 trillion a year earlier.
This sale of foreign and peso bonds and notes to an overseas audience was on top of foreign loans worth P1.68 trillion in February this year, up 23.8 percent from a year earlier when this totaled only P1.36 trillion.
