Claim: The PNoy administration incurred a debt of P1.37 trillion, while the national debt increased to P12.68 trillion under the Duterte admin.
Rating: TRUE
In a post circulating on Facebook, a publication material compared the national debt incurred under the administration of former president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III and that of outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte. The pubmat shows PNoy administration’s debt amounted to P1.37 trillion during his term. While Duterte’s legacy, as the “greatest thieves ever,” leaves the country with P12.68 trillion in debt as of March 2022.
This is true.
The Facts: The national outstanding debt of a country (national debt) refers to the cumulative amount of net borrowing that the government has made from local and foreign creditors, and has not yet repaid. This not only refers to the debt incurred under a single administration but includes that of previous leaderships.
Based on the data from the Bureau of Treasury (BTr), when PNoy ended his term in June 2016, the national outstanding debt of the country was P5.94 trillion.
However, the most accurate way of computing the total amount of debt a single administration incurred is to measure the net addition to the outstanding amount during a particular office. In June 2010, the outstanding debt was around P4.6 trillion.
2010.pdf
Thus, comparing the numbers from June 2010 to June 2016, the national debt incurred during the Aquino administration indeed amounted to P1.37 trillion.
In contrast, the outstanding debt of the country has risen to 17.7% as of March 2022 to a record high of P12.68 trillion since last year.
This is a 113.2% increase from PNoy’s last term in June 2016.
As it stands, the net addition to the national debt of the country is P6.74 trillion under the Duterte administration.
Outstanding debt is projected to peak at P13 trillion by the end of 2022.
According to the IBON Foundation, this is “the biggest debt burden on the Filipino people since the Marcos dictatorship.” (https://www.ibon.org/ng-debt-under-du30-ao-mar2022/
Why we fact-checked this: Macroeconomic factors and statistics are some ways we can examine the performance of national leaders. As the Duterte administration comes to an end, we must scrutinize what his 6-year term has amounted to and whether the economy he established truly worked for the country and the Filipino people.
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