Philippines: Oil and rice undo hard work

“The issue of balancing the budget is not a sacrosanct goal at this point in time. Some of these things are really beyond our control” Margarito Teves

It’s worth recalling just how bad things once were in the Philippines. In 2004, government debt was equivalent to 79% of GDP, and interest payments on that debt were consuming 37.3% of all revenues. That meant that more than one-third of all incoming money, in a poor country battling a host of challenges from El Niño to the oil price, was going straight to banks, rather than to roads or education.