Debt service ratio improves

The debt burden, representing foreign currency deployed to pay down the country’s foreign debt, improved further in the first five months this year compared to last year.

According to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the country’s foreign debt in ralation to local output measured as the gross domestic product improved to only 23 percent of GDP this year from last year’s 24 percent.

The metric is an indicator of how much more or less the Philippines is able to meet or service the foreign-currency obligations as and when they mature.

The sovereign credit watchers Moody’s Investor Service, Fitch as well as Standard and Poor’s train a keen eye on the changing number and use it as a gauge in determining the country’s creditworthiness.

According to data obtained from the BSP, the country’s total debt retreated and improved in the first five months this year to only $73.196 billion and compared favorably against the year-ago level of $73.805 billion.

The diminution of foreign debt by $609 million over the five-month stretch, while marginal in absolute terms, helped drive down the sovereign’s debt burden 0.8 percent lower.

Compared against total foreign debt equal to $73.098 billion, the five-month foreign debt aggregate actually represents an expansion in the country’s foreign obligations, data show.

The five-month foreign debt of the public sector, which encompasses the swath of national government entities and their instrumentalities, totaled $39.20 billion versus only $37.66 billion last year or an expansion by four percent.

This means the public sector contracted more foreign debt than it paid during the period.

This developed even as the country gross international reserves or GIS, a reflection of its ability to service maturing foreign debt and underwrite the importation of capital, for instance, diminished to only $79.20 billion from $82.17 billion.

Still, the GIR as cover for the country’s foreign-currency requirements, stands well above the three-month standard equivalent, according to the BSP.