By Chino S. Leyco National government’s borrowings tripled in July this year owing to higher concessional loans or official development assistance (ODA) from multilateral institutions used to fund the Duterte administration’s P8-trillion infrastructure program.     Data from the Bureau of the Treasury showed that the national government’s total financing during the month accelerated by 210.5 percent to P44.12 billion from P14.21 billion in the same month last year. In July, foreign borrowings amounted to P23.07 billion, a significant jump compared with only P1.18 billion in the previous year. Of that amount, P21.39 billion was program loans, equivalent to 92.71 percent of the total financing. The remaining P1.68 billion, meanwhile, represented project loans from multilateral agencies, like the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, among others. Local borrowings, on the other hand, rose by 61 percent year-on-year to P21.05 billion in July from P13.03 billion a year before, which were all raised through the sale short-dated IOUs or three-, six-, and one-year Treasury bills. The July actual financing brought the national government’s total borrowings in the first seven months of the year to P505.25 billion, an increase of 9.3 percent compared with P462.01 billion in the same period last year. At end-July, domestic financing declined by 14 percent to P326.36 billion from P379.58 billion, while offshore borrowings rose by more than double year-on-year to P178.9 billion from P82.43 billion. But despite the rise, the national government’s end-July gross borrowings were still way below its program for the year of P971.86 billion. President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s economic team has committed to mobilize up to P8 trillion during their administration to underwrite the government’s ambitious infrastructure buildup program. The massive infrastructure investment, which the Duterte administration describes as the “golden age of infrastructure,” is expected to bring the country’s economic growth rate to at least 7.0 percent over the medium term. For 2019, the national government has set for the first time its borrowing program at a trillion level. National Treasurer Rosalia V. de Leon earlier said that the government was planning to borrow P1.19 trillion next year from the domestic and foreign markets, up by 19 percent compared with P996 billion this year. In nominal terms, the government will secure P891.7 billion from the local debt market, while P297.2 billion from the overseas financial institutions. For this reason, the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) expects the national government’s total debt stock could reach P8.115 trillion next year, or 10 percent more than the P7.331-trillion target for 2018.