{"id":94517,"date":"2017-03-18T05:02:08","date_gmt":"2017-03-18T09:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=94517"},"modified":"2017-03-18T05:02:22","modified_gmt":"2017-03-18T09:02:22","slug":"phl-foreign-debts-down-to-usd74-8-b-in-end-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/03\/18\/phl-foreign-debts-down-to-usd74-8-b-in-end-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"PHL foreign debts down to USD74.8 B in end-2016"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\u2014<\/a>
\u2014 Strengthening of the US dollar against other currencies along with repayments by the national government (NG) of its foreign liabilities helped lower the Philippines\u2019 outstanding foreign debt in end-2016. (Photo: Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA\u2014 Strengthening of the US dollar against other currencies along with repayments by the national government (NG) of its foreign liabilities helped lower the Philippines\u2019 outstanding foreign debt in end-2016.<\/p>\n

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), in a release posted on its website Friday night, said outstanding external debt of the Philippine government and the private sector as of end-December last year declined by 2.4 percent to USD74.8 billion from the previous quarter\u2019s USD76.6 billion.<\/p>\n

Year-on-year, the debt level is also lower compared to the USD77.5 billion in end-2015.<\/p>\n

BSP Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr., in a statement, said that aside from the payment of the government of its liabilities, another factor in the quarter-on-quarter drop in the country\u2019s debt level was the audit adjustments on the liabilities done in the previous months.<\/p>\n

Specifically, revaluation adjustments as a result of the dollar\u2019s appreciation against the Japanese yen, among others, amounted to USD1.8 billion; net principal repayments by the government, particularly the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation (PSALM), amounted to USD611 million, while audit adjustments amounted to USD73 million.<\/p>\n

The BSP, on the other hand, noted that the effect of these downward adjustments on the liabilities was countered by the transfer of USD591-million worth of government-issued debt instruments from onshore investors to overseas fund sources.<\/p>\n

Even with the new foreign last year, Tetangco said the country\u2019s external debt indicators \u201cremained at comfortable levels at the close of 2016.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the country\u2019s gross international reserves (GIR), or foreign exchange reserves, reached USD80.7 billion at the end of 2016, enough to cover 5.6 times of the country\u2019s short-term debt, which in turn amounted to USD 14.526 billion as of last year.<\/p>\n

As of end-2016, bulk or about 80.6 percent of the country\u2019s foreign debt, have tenors of medium- to long-term (MLT) with a weighted average maturity of 16.9 years.<\/p>\n

Public sector MLT loans have a weighted average maturity of 22.9 years, longer than the private sector\u2019s 7.9 years.<\/p>\n

As of end-2016, public sector\u2019s liabilities amounted to USD37.5 billion, lower by USD1.8 billion compared to the end-September 2016\u2019s USD39.3 billion.<\/p>\n

Private sector\u2019s debt during the same period totaled to USD37.29 billion, down from the previous quarter\u2019s USD37.33 billion.<\/p>\n

Bulk of the country\u2019s debt as of last year is accounted for those denominated in US dollars, 65.1 percent, followed by Japanese yen, 12 percent; US dollar-denominated multi-currency loans from multilateral lenders – Washington-based World Bank (WB) and Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) – USD12.8 percent.<\/p>\n

The remaining 10.1 percent is accounted for by loans denominated in 17 other currencies such as the Philippine peso, 6.3 percent; International Monetary Fund\u2019s (IMF) special drawing rights (SDR), 2.1 percent; and Euro, 1.1 percent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA\u2014 Strengthening of the US dollar against other currencies along with repayments by the national government (NG) of its foreign …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":84235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1216],"class_list":["post-94517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-bangko-sentral-ng-pilipinas","mauthors-joann-santiago","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}