Ruinous political division

Our government debt has broken the ceiling, hitting P16 trillion as of October 2024, just two months to go till the end of 2024, from only P6 trillion in 2016.

The propensity of our lawmakers is to look at the budget expenditure and not the matching revenues to cope with the obligations. We have not been careful in handling the economy. No matter the efforts to control rising debt, the National Expenditure Program (NEP) goes up by an estimated 10 percent a year, but the increase in revenues has been very minimal, resulting in gaping yearly deficits.

As long as we have willing lenders, the government is not jolted anymore that we are building up debt more than the economy can bear. Our borrowing has hit 60.2 percent of debt-to-GDP ratio, breaching the 60 percent limit set by international lenders, as well. Fortunately, we have reduced the proportion of our foreign debt to 37 percent of the total.

The deficit of P1.6 trillion in 2022 was gradually reduced to P1.5 trillion in 2023. It might be reducing the gap a little bit, but at that rate we would be staying within the perilous realm of having P1 trillion a year in operating deficit, increasing total debt by an average of P1 trillion a year. This means that the next two or three generations will have this debt yoke to bear. We cannot be lulled into continuing with deficit spending that we have been used to, mostly for the social and health services of a growing population and not for infrastructure geared for economic development.

If the head of the family is earning a salary of P50,000 a month and yet must spend P55,000, how can one survive without resorting to borrowings to go on living? Our generation would be pawning the entire future of the country in hand-to-mouth existence for our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

We will all have to sit down and count the cost of the ongoing political noise and division.

This move for impeachment of the Vice President in Congress, and the ongoing International Criminal Court-related congressional investigations of drug war killings of the Duterte years could be a righteous way of redress for victims of grievances. But let the Department of Justice, law enforcement agencies, and the courts handle criminal cases and not leave the whole country divided and the economy shattered over them. The government must focus on the nation’s economic survival.

We realize how politics has thwarted controls in the anomalous spending seen in government offices estimated at 20 percent of the NEP wasted. How can economic managers do enough to enforce financial accountability and discipline? This, even if the Department of Finance and the Department of Budget and Management know how and are at the forefront to implement such financial controls in ending corruption at its roots, where it starts. People heading government offices are the ones likely involved and engaged in corrupt practices, or at the very least should be made directly answerable for them, but most are political appointees of the sitting administration. It does not serve political dominance under the presidential system.

MARVEL K. TAN,

marvelktan@yahoo.com