Government borrowings increased at the end of the first 10 months of this year as more debt papers were sold locally, the state-run Bureau of Treasury said over the weekend.

The latest Treasury data showed that gross borrowings during the January to October period rose by 17 percent to P1.86 trillion from P1.58 trillion a year ago.

Gross domestic borrowings accounted for the bulk of the financing, or 81.18 percent, while the rest were from gross external borrowings.

In particular, gross domestic borrowings during the 10 months reached P1.51 trillion, while gross external borrowings stood at P456.31 billion.

End-October borrowings up

For October alone, the government's borrowings also increased 17 percent to P208.15 billion from P176.56 billion last year.

Gross borrowings from local lenders increased to P174.63 billion in October 2023 from P56.73 billion in October 2022

Broken down, P90 billion was secured through fixed-rate Treasury bonds. At the same time, the government recorded a net redemption of P12.85 billion for T-bills in October.

However, gross borrowings from foreign lenders decreased from P125.70 billion last October 2022 to P50.57 this year.

Program loans made up the majority of external financing at P42.51 billion.

The remaining P8.05 billion of the external borrowings were project loans. There were no samurai bonds and program loans from multilateral institutions during the month.