THE national government lowered its domestic borrowing program for the third quarter to P300 billion, on the back of robust collections of the main revenue agencies of the government.
National Treasurer Rosalia V. de Leon cited the good performance of both the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and Bureau of Customs (BOC), as well as the successful retail Treasury bond (RTB) issuance earlier in the month.
“[The lower amount is due to the] RTB and sustained good collection performance of [the] BIR and BOC,” de Leon said in a text message.
Domestic borrowings in the form of Treasury bills (T-bills) and Treasury bonds (T-bonds) were lowered to P300 billion in the third quarter, coming from the P325 billion in the second quarter of this year. This showed a contraction of 7.6 percent.
The government had set a domestic borrowing program of P240 billion for the first quarter of this year, awarding only P124 billion in the end.
Broken down, P195 billion will be borrowed through T-bills and P105 billion through T-bonds, with the auction for T-bills happening on a weekly basis and the auction for T-bonds every fortnight.
During the July-to-September period, the Treasury is set to have 13 auctions for three-month, six-month and one-year IOUs at an offer size of P15 billion. A total of seven auctions is set for T-bonds with an offer size of P15 billion each, as well with the tenors ranging from three, five, seven, 10 and 20 years.
The national government has a borrowing program of P889.51 billion for domestic and foreign lenders this year, with P176.26 billion coming from external institutions and P711.8 billion from the local market.
Earlier in the month, the BTr had successfully issued P121.8 billion worth of three-year RTBs, coming from the good reception from the investing public during its offer period. Following the offer period from May 30 to June 8, the first offering of RTBs for 2018 was met with strong demand from the investing public with the total issue size more than four times higher from the initial planned issuance of P30 billion.
Based on data from the Department of Finance, total government revenues from the January-to-May period reached P1.186 trillion, with the BIR contributing P827.7 billion and the BOC, P229.4 billion.