Debt curse upon Filipinos

The national debt has ballooned to a head-spinning P19.39 trillion and by the time President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. leaves Malacañang in 2028, it will be significantly higher.

The next occupant of the Palace will spend years paying for choices made now.

The government’s own Medium-Term Fiscal Program projects a deficit of P1.69 trillion in 2027 and P1.72 trillion in 2028. Every peso to plug that deficit is borrowed.

Add it up and roughly P3.41 trillion gets bolted onto the debt stock by the end of 2028, on top of the P19 trillion already there. Half of the 2028 borrowing will likely happen before Marcos hands over the presidency.

Borrowing, by itself, isn’t the crime, public finance specialist Zy-za Nadine Suzara held.

Debt that builds roads, ports, schools and hospitals pays for itself over time as the economy grows into it.

That’s the theory economists point to when they say a rising debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio isn’t automatically a disaster, as long as growth outpaces borrowing.

The problem is the Philippines doesn’t have that growth right now. GDP expansion has slowed for four straight quarters.

At the same time, the peso is trading near historic lows against the dollar. That combination is a trap, according to Suzara, because a weak peso means the government needs more local currency to service every dollar of foreign debt.

So even if the debt figure in dollar terms doesn’t move, its peso cost climbs. Slower growth and a weaker currency are hitting at the same time, the two things that make the debt-to-GDP look worse.

Then there’s the corruption problem where a meaningful share of the money the government borrows to fund the budget doesn’t build anything. It leaks into padded contracts, ghost projects, and the kind of graft the flood control scandal has laid bare in painful detail.

That means the country isn’t just borrowing to invest — it’s borrowing to feed leakage, and future taxpayers will be repaying money that built nothing.

Debt addiction instantly creates two problems: how much the nation owes and how much it can raise to pay it.

Here the prospect is near zero. No new tax measure that would generate serious money is on the table. The administration’s plan to save costs by abolishing redundant government corporations sounds sensible, but the Department of Finance says that process would take years, not months. It won’t move the fiscal needle before this administration is out the door.

Then there’s the spending side, which is only getting heavier. Mandatory budget allocations, items the government is legally required to fund regardless of the fiscal picture, already eat into flexibility.

Also hanging over the shrinking fiscal space is the pension system for military and uniformed personnel.

Left as it is, that liability alone could cost the government roughly P900 billion a year and there’s no indication this administration will fix it. That bill, too, gets forwarded to whoever sits in Malacañang after 2028.

The next president will inherit a huge debt stock, and the budget is expected to run a growing deficit, mainly because of past borrowing decisions.

Then the burden will grow heavier because growth has slowed drastically, making it harder to outrun the debt.