The Department of Finance (DoF) expects program loans to exceed $1 billion this year while project loans which have local counterpart funding is projected to reach $800 million.

DoF Undersecretary for international finance, Rosalia de Leon, said they are reviewing the list of program loans for 2010, which would include the World Bank’s $250 million Development Policy Loan and the Japan International Cooperation Agency’s own $250 million policy support program co-financed with the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

What has not been programmed but are expected to come in later in the year are additional program loans from the ADB and the World Bank as they realigned funding to suit the national program support for several projects such as conditional cash transfer loans.

Last year the DoF said official development assistance (ODA) program loans totalled $1.5 billion, $300 million more than original estimate of $1.2 billion.

National Treasurer Roberto Tan said that while the amount was higher than expected, some of the loans that were supposed to be released in December will be disbursed this quarter instead.

Tan said the government is maintaining its $3.8-billion external borrowing program for 2010. They were able to raise $4.4 billion last year and a portion of this amount will pre-fund this year’s dollar requirements. About $3.31 billion of the $4.4 billion are from global bond issues.

The emerging budget deficit program is almost P300 billion or 3.8 percent of gross domestic product for 2010.

The Monetary Board of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas has recently approved government’s proposed ROP issuance of up to $1.5 billion in dollar and $1 billion in yen.

Sources said the bigger tranche will only be in dollar unlike previous approvals where the global bonds are a combination of dollar and euro currencies.

The government has maturing debts in dollar and euro in February and March amounting to $1.6 billion including interests.

The Philippines has already sought the US Securities and Exchange Commission for the registration of the same amount of debt securities or $2.55 billion to allow it to sell at least $3 billion in debt notes

The government has about $448 million remaining registration with the US agency. Based on the documents, the Philippines have an estimated direct external debt service requirement at $5.17 billion next year and $5.77 billion in 2011.

The proposed Samurai bonds of up to $1 billion, in the meantime, has been guaranteed by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.