The Philippine government may sell $500 million of dollar and euro-denominated debt to Filipinos working overseas to finance a record deficit, Treasurer Roberto Tan said.

“That’s the current proposed level but it may be lower if we want to be conservative,” Tan said in a mobile phone message Friday.

The offering may be completed this quarter, according to a research note Friday from First Metro Investment Corp., one of the banks that proposed the sale.

The government is looking to tap earnings of nationals working as nurses, sailors, and nannies abroad who sent home $15.8 billion in the first 11 months of 2009, a 5.1 percent increase from the same period a year ago. The Philippines has failed to sell all the bonds on offer at local auctions twice this year, forcing the government to turn to offshore investors.

“The government is doing everything to ease the pressure on domestic funding,” said Speedy Delfino, a fixed income trader at Bank of Commerce in Manila. Peso bond yields will drop this month as foreign-currency borrowings are completed and “the market remains liquid,” Delfino said.

A plan is in the pipeline for an offering of 100 billion yen ($1.1 billion) of bonds to Japanese investors this month after selling $1.5 billion of US currency notes in January, which would complete the 2010 debt-sale target of $2.5 billion, Tan said Thursday. The government projects the budget deficit will reach P293 billion this year.

Money deposited at the central bank’s overnight and special accounts, a gauge of surplus cash, climbed to P877.3 billion as of Jan. 22 from P863 billion the previous week. About P61.64 billion of government debt will fall due on Feb. 21. The central bank will report full-year remittances for 2009 on Feb. 15.