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Monday, March 14, 2005
Oledan: Repudiation
By Radzini Oledan
Slice of Life
"In the Philippines and other countries similarly burdened with debt, an estimated 30,000 children die each day due to preventable diseases."
DEBT has a child's face. Every centavo set aside for debt servicing means a cut on basic services that should rightfully be enjoyed by children.
Access to clean water, adequate housing, basic health care and quality education is sacrificed with the huge yearly allocations for debt payment.
Do children have to starve and die for a skewed national policy of automatic appropriation for debt service?
Automatic appropriation for debt servicing accords the highest priority to payment of loans, taking away resources that could otherwise be used to buy medicine, construct classrooms and build decent shelter.
In the Philippines and other countries similarly burdened with debt, an estimated 30,000 children die each day due to preventable diseases.
There is no way out to reverse the situation but push for the cancellation of debt to free up the resources.
The debt had been paid time and again.However, the skyrocketing interest rates and compound interests have made repayment impossible especially with an interim debt relief, which is conditioned on the requirement that countries sign a new loan.
Consider also that there has been no thorough accounting on the country's public sector debt, which stands roughly at P5.9 trillion, far bigger than the P5.2-trillion gross domestic product.
This means that we had been religiously paying for some debts incurred through fraudulent means.
Some debts also end up being stolen wealth or loans that served the purposes of the elite, rather than the people.
Other debts resulted from irresponsible projects that failed to serve a greater purpose or caused harm to the people or the environment such as the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant.
This year alone, the government has allocated 80% of its revenues for debt servicing. The combined interest payment and maturing principal also cover more than 85% of the projected tax and non-tax revenues.
The Lagman Report shows that most of these loans were incurred by the late President Marcos; 417 private corporations pass on their P417 billion loans to tax payers; 94 corporations left to Central Bank their P300-billion private corporate debts.
The country is forced to yield to unequal terms and conditions of the World Bank and the IMF in order to get fresh loans, a large chunk of which goes back to debt servicing.
The need to repeal the automatic appropriation for debt servicing has become more urgent as the public debt has swung beyond control.
The government's increasing dependence on borrowing means that the debt service burden is getting heavier and heavier.
The uncritical servicing of these debt obligations do not only undermine the delivery of vital public social services but also require the imposition of higher taxes on the already overburdened citizenry.
We submit that repealing the automatic appropriation and negotiating for the repudiation of foreign debt is the best way out of this fiscal crisis.
Let not the children further suffer from our blind subservience.Let us not rob them of a better life.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (March 14, 2005 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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