MANILA, Philippines – MAGHAHANAP ang Pilipinas ng iba pang maaaring pagkuhanan ng pondo lalo pa’t inaasahan na nitong mawawala ang concessional financing at development assistance dahil sa bagong klasipikasyon bilang isang upper-middle-income country.
Sinabi ni Department of Economy, Planning, and Development (DepDev) Secretary Arsenio Balisacan na ang bansa ay mayroong three-year window para makapag-adjust, dahil ang preferential financial agreements ay mawawala nang paunti-unti.
“I think in the next three years, we will still maintain those concessional loans but gradually, as we progress, we will lose eventually those ones,” ang sinabi ni Balisacan.
“There will still be other development partners who continue to lend to us at concessional loans, at least for those projects that they see and we see as high impact, high developmental impact. Those are the ones that we will be exploring with those agencies, development partners,” ang winika pa ng Kalihim.
Sa ulat, nitong Hulyo 1, pormal nang kinilala ng World Bank ang Pilipinas bilang kasapi ng mga bansang napapabilang sa “Upper Middle-Income Country.”
Batay sa anunsyo ng Department of Economy, Planning, and Development (DEPDev), naarok ng bansa ang gross national income (GNI) per capita na $4,850 noong 2025.
Dahil sa bagong klasipikasyon, unti-unting mawawala sa Pilipinas ang access sa uri ng concessional financing, development assistance, at aid programs na karaniwang nagsisilbi sa mas mahihirap na ekonomiya. Kasama nito, ang bansa ay maaaring lumipat sa mas higit na paghiram sa market-based rates.
“In the meantime, we have the time to develop our capacity to access other sources of financing, particularly those that are evolving now, like climate-related financing, for example, and ensure that not just the government, the private sector can also access those financing,” ani Balisacan.
“Even as we lost the concessional loans, the greater benefits are opened up from the improvements in access to financing by both government and the private sector,” aniya pa rin.
Winika pa nito na ipagpapatuloy ng bansa ang pagtatrabaho para mapanatili ang upper-middle-income country status, habang nakatuon ang administrasyon sa pagpapatuloy ng reporma para mapabilis ang paglago at gawin itong mas ingklusibo.
“Those are also pressure for us to keep driving the push for reform so that we are able to sustain the momentum, so the possibility of us going back to lower-middle-income class is, I think, quite remote, unless you know, you have certainly a very bad development in our political economy but we don’t see that,” ang winika ni Balisacan.
Para naman kay DepDev Undersecretary Joseph Capuno, magtatrabaho ang bansa para sa three-year window upang magpokus sa mga nagpapatuloy na proyekto at alalayan nang bahagya ang bagong mga infrastructure projects.
“We’re going to be very selective in approving projects for next year that would require government financing, precisely because there is very limited fiscal space but we can approve projects now if they require financing in 2028,” anito.
“Basically, if they can slide government financing to 2028, we can approve more because by that time, we see the fiscal space becoming larger,” aniya pa rin.
Sinabi pa rin ni Capuno na mayroong 20 hanggang 30 projects na maaaring maapektuhan. Ang mga ito ay ginawa kasama ang development partners gaya ng Asian Development Bank (ADB), World Bank, at Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
“In the general scheme of things, grants are just a smaller part of the whole financing that we get from multilaterals and bilaterals. A big part is actually ODA [Official Development Assistance] loans,” ayon kay Capuno.
“Sometimes, many of these grants are tied to eventually taking out a loan from these development partners, so mayroon din tayong three-year window to take advantage of those grants,” ang pahayag pa niya. (Kris Jose)
