Emergency relief for millions of Filipino families during the\nunprecedented COVID-19 crisis is more important than mindless debt servicing,\nresearch group IBON said. The government should get its priorities straight,\nsaid the group, and seriously consider at least a moratorium on the\ngovernment\u2019s debt payments. This will help provide much-delayed relief and\nfinancial assistance to the most vulnerable Filipinos affected by the\ncoronavirus lockdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez recently rejected the proposal\nof economic affairs committee chair Senator Imee Marcos to seek a moratorium on\ndebt payments to enable additional funding for the country\u2019s COVID-19 response\nmeasures. Dominguez said the proposition has not been and will never be\nconsidered despite the pandemic. Honoring its financial obligations, he said,\nis the strongest pillar of the Philippines\u2019 standing in the global community and\nthe reason behind investor confidence in the economy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
IBON executive director Sonny Africa said that the government\u2019s\nobsession with so-called creditworthiness is blinding it to how a moratorium\ncan help give much more, and much more quickly, to the poor amid the raging coronavirus\ncrisis and its burdensome impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Philippines is in the worst public health crisis in its\nhistory,\u201d Africa said. \u201cThe poor already suffer the worst economic crisis in\ndecades \u2013 aggravated by the Duterte administration\u2019s slow response to contain\nthe pandemic, over-reliance on a harsh military lockdown, and stingy relief\nefforts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Africa said that government should stop its wilful blindness to\nwhat the people need, which is hindering the country\u2019s ability to stop the spread\nof COVID-19, build up the public health system, and give relief to millions of\nFilipinos. At least part of the over Php1 trillion in funds for debt servicing in\n2020 can be used for urgent COVID-19 response instead, he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The national government is paying Php1.03 trillion to service debt\nin 2020 \u2013 Php451 billion for interest payments and Php582.1 billion for\nprincipal amortization. Some Php285.8 billion of this goes to servicing foreign\ndebt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Duterte administration needs to drastically increase spending\nto respond. It can begin by negotiating with foreign multilateral and bilateral\nagencies to waive interest and principal payments or even to totally cancel\nPhilippine debt obligations in the face of the pandemic, said Africa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe government will be paying so-called development agencies and supposedly friendly governments at least US$1.7 billion in 2020,\u201d Africa said. This consists of: US$686.6 million to the Asian Development Bank (ADB); US$433.8 million to the World Bank; US$406.9 million to Japan; US$21.4 million to China; and US$17.3 million to the United States. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Africa said that the government\u2019s narrow-minded debt policy is the biggest stumbling block to a debt moratorium. \u201cCreditors will always want to be repaid. The government\u2019s job is to struggle for the best possible terms for the country and not to defend creditors\u2019 claims,\u201d he said. \u201cThe suffering of so many proves we are a country in need. The government should stop pretending that a policy of debt relief and debt restructuring is not an urgent option.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
CORRECTION: Sorry, the correct figure for debt service is US$1.7 billion and not US$5.2 billion as mentioned in the original post.<\/em> The figure was corrected on this article on April 25, at 9:30PM.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NEWS<\/p>\n Emergency relief for millions of Filipino families during the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis is more important than mindless debt servicing.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2048,14],"tags":[2199,2218,2228,347],"class_list":["post-9402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banner","category-news","tag-covid-19","tag-covid-19-response","tag-debt-policy","tag-duterte-administration","wpautop"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-23 17:27:19","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9402"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9475,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9402\/revisions\/9475"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}