DAVAO CITY – The city government said it would finally free itself from indebtedness by the second semester of the coming year after its outstanding balance of P70 million remained way below its annual debt allocation of its annual budget.
“For 2022, good news for Davao City, this will be the last year we would be paying our debt. After the second half of 2022, Davao City will be debt-free,” Mayor Sara Dutetre-Carpio disclosed in her regular program at the city government-operated Davao City Disaster Radio (DCDR).
After the city’s recent debt payment, its outstanding loan balance was reduced to only P70 million. This is way below the annual city budget allocation of P200 million for loans.
“After that, in the annual budget of 2023, we won’t be paying interest or principal on our loans so that is approximately P200 to P300 million to be free for use,” the mayor said.
Duterte-Carpio said she would discuss this further in her State of the City Address on January 24. She was supposed to deliver her address on December 20 but moved it early next year to sympathize with the people affected by Typhoon Odette.
The mayor noted that a clean bill from loans “is just one of the good developments amid the coronavirus pandemic”. Only recently, Davao City ranked eighth richest city in the Philippines, according to the consolidated 2020 Annual Financial Report for Local Government Units (LGUs) of the Commission on Audit (COA).
“That is very factual, based on Davao City records,” Mayor Sara said.
She said the COA reported that Davao City’s wealth was at P23.664 billion with current assets (CA) of P14.172 billion and non-current assets (NCA) of P9.493 billion.
Quezon City was the richest city with P452.333 billion, followed by Makati City (P238.464B) in second, Manila (P76.548B) third, Pasig (49.510B) fourth, Cebu (P34.754B) fifth, Mandaue (P32.570B) sixth, Taguig (P30.682B) seventh, Davao City (P23.664B) eighth, Caloocan
(P22.203B) ninth, and Zamboanga (P19,775B) 10th.
Many of these expenditures went to infrastructure improvement, including new buildings for city government offices engaged in frontline activities such as health, agriculture, engineering, education and social welfare, almost all of which are nearing completion.