Lacson: Each Filipino in debt by P120K

MEXICO, Pampanga, Philippines — With government debt projected to swell to P13.42 trillion in eight months, each Filipino owes creditors P120,000.

With this staggering amount of debt, Sen. Panfilo Lacson said local government units (LGUs) should be given greater power over funds for implementing local development projects.

Speaking at an online forum with Pampanga residents, Lacson, who is running for president under Partido Reporma, said the pandemic has stalled the implementation of many vital government projects and pushed the country’s debt to a staggering level.

He is running in tandem with Senate President Vicente Sotto III.

“No one else knows the needs and priorities of LGUs than the local officials,” Lacson said.

“We do not know when the pandemic will end. And another thing, because of the pandemic, our national debt has ballooned,” he added.

In September, the national debt was pegged at P11.92 trillion from only P5.9 trillion when President Duterte assumed office in 2016. In effect, each Filipino, he said, owes creditors at least P120,000.

Lacson said the rising debt is just one of the problems the next president has to deal with aside from peace and order and China’s provocations in the West Philippine Sea.

He cited the need for empowering LGUs by giving them greater control over funds so they could smoothly carry out development projects in this time of pandemic, including livelihood programs for drivers and senior citizens as well as an improved “ayuda” system.

Lacson has championed empowering of LGUs through his Budget Reform Advocacy for Village Empowerment (BRAVE) advocacy.

He told the forum of the need for judicious use of limited public funds, targeted at P5.024-trillion for 2022.

The presidential hopeful said Pampanga is memorable to him, as he had spent Christmas and New Year in the province in 1992 with his men in the then Presidential Anti-Crime Commission’s Task Force Habagat which was doing surveillance on kidnap-for-ransom leader Alfredo “Joey” de Leon.

“Our then chairman, then Vice President Joseph Estrada, gave us until yearend 1992 to stop the gang. We got the job done in February 1993 when de Leon was killed in an encounter at the boundary of Pampanga and Bulacan,” he said.