Utang pa more!

Our debt-to-GDP ratio has climbed to 63.1 percent, up from 62 percent in March, supposedly the highest level since 2005.

- BOO CHANCO

Some are wondering how long we can keep on borrowing to fund our government's wasteful and corrupt practices without precipitating a crisis.

For a country in the Philippines' income bracket, keeping debt-to-GDP at or below 60 percent is generally seen as prudent.

Gone are the days of Noynoy Aquino when our debt burden dropped from roughly 54.5 percent in 2010 to about 36 percent by the time he left office. He is the one president who has kept the public debt from growing faster (at 4.4 percent) than GDP (at 6.2 percent), a critical condition for debt sustainability.

Our debt-to-GDP ratio today is notably higher than our peers, Indonesia (39 percent) and Vietnam (34 percent).

While we are still within internationally accepted thresholds for developing countries, there is less cushion for additional borrowing or fiscal expansion—specially in times of economic stress. In other words, we can't go on like this indefinitely.

Can the country go bankrupt if our corrupt officials keep on stealing and DOF keeps on borrowing to fund their stealing?

Well, no, a country like ours can't go bankrupt like badly run companies. There is no global legal framework to oversee sovereign insolvencies. We went for debt restructuring in the early 80s when the first Marcos presidency mismanaged our finances.

We experienced something that looked like sovereign bankruptcy in the first Marcos era.

In 1983, our officials were caught using PNB international branches to move money to branches in another time zone with the same going back to the sending branch before banking hours opened there. It gave the impression we had $600 million dollars more than we really had.