The Debt Trap, The Ghosts We Fund, And The Bill Our Children Will Pay

The Department of Budget and Management has announced a fresh borrowing spree: ₱1.7 trillion for this year alone.

Audit reports and public records show the cruelest irony: loans sustain not progress, but ghosts. (Photo: Navotas Public Information Office Facebook)

It is a staggering sum—larger than the budgets of entire sectors—and it pushes our debt-to-GDP ratio above 60 percent, a threshold many economists warn is a danger zone.

But the Philippines is not unique. Across the globe, governments are raiding tomorrow to pay for today.

IMF reports and economic briefs reveal a chilling picture: global public debt has already surged past US$100 trillion, nearly equal to the size of the entire world economy.

At the current pace, the IMF warns, the global debt burden could swallow 100 percent of GDP by the decade’s end. From Washington to Buenos Aires, from Beijing to Manila, nations are caught in the same spiral: borrow to survive, then borrow more to pay the interest.

Yet the more dangerous trap is not simply how much we borrow, but what we do—or fail to do—with borrowed funds.

Audit reports and public records show the cruelest irony: loans sustain not progress, but ghosts.

President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., during the inauguration of the Integrated Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation Project-Stage 1 (IDRR-CCA 1) in Masantol, Pampanga. (Photo: Presidential Communications Office)

Flood control projects that never broke ground, phantom dikes that exist only on paper, embankments signed off but never built.

The Commission on Audit itself has flagged such “projects,” funded and recorded yet invisible in reality. For these, the nation pays not only the principal but years of interest—on nothing.

This is the most corrosive face of the debt trap: we borrow in the name of development but service debt for phantoms. Interest accrues on empty lots, vanished blueprints, and the debris of corruption.

Debt, which should be a bridge to the future, becomes a mortgage on decay.

The mechanics are viciously simple: borrowed funds go to waste. No productive return follows. Interest payments fall due. The government borrows again to cover the gap. Thus, the spiral deepens.

It is not enough to lament the figures. Borrowings must be anchored on productivity, not perfidy. The next trillion must not fund ghosts—it must fund growth.

That requires discipline on three fronts:

• Revenue reform. Widen the tax base, plug leakages, and make every peso count.

• Prudent borrowing. Channel loans not into ribbon-cuttings but into projects that yield jobs, food, and resilience.

• Accountability. Those who enabled ghost projects should face more than audits; they should face sanction. Otherwise, we will keep paying for phantoms while our children inherit the bill.

The Philippines is part of a global debt storm—but storms can be weathered if the ship is steered with vigilance. Borrowing is not evil; waste is. Debt is not destiny; misuse is.

If we must borrow another ₱1.7 trillion, let it not be to feed corruption’s ghosts. Let it be to build foundations that stand, harvests that endure, and futures our children can live in without fear of paying for our sins.

These ghost projects are not harmless errors in accounting. They are vehicles of privilege.

A failed flood control project in Barangay Bulusan and Frances in Calumpit, Bulacan. (Photo: Philippine Information Agency)

Funds that should have built dikes to spare communities from floods instead bankroll the luxuries of a few.

While the corrupt glide in imported cars bought with the people’s money, the country’s poor cram into buses and endure daily gridlock. The irony is obscene: borrowed wealth turned into private wheels, while public roads remain choked with suffering.

The reckoning cannot be postponed. Unless corruption is punished, we will remain condemned to pay for phantoms while our children inherit the debt.