Semper Fi

to strong demand for money.

As I dissect the meaning of each letter, the cautious optimism stemmed from certain uneasiness in the conduct of business, taking into consideration developments here and abroad.

For one, the geopolitical situation in the country is a wild card, which may cause some investors to take the sidelines up until the results of the US mid-term election. It could spell the difference. This sentiment holds true as well for the emerging markets with India and Indonesia scheduled to hold an election to choose their new leaders. The changing of the guard in these two largest economies in Asia adds to the political uncertainty. Combined with talks of Japan going into stagnation, the Brexit issue, the instability in Italy, the talk of a possible recession in the US may alter the investment climate moving forward.

The resultant risk aversion on the backdrop of the changing geopolitical landscape could make it difficult for the national government to raise its funding requirements abroad. Of the 11.19-trillion programmed borrowings of the government, 25 percent or about 1298.3 billion will be sourced offshore while the balance of 1891.7 billion will be raised domestically.

Unlike the previous year, I had it from a reliable source that the national government has failed to pre-fund some of its financial needs for 2019. The window for borrowing was a bit tight during the last few weeks of 2018. Bureau of Treasury (BTr) was supposed to do so but was kind of late. BTr has its “finger on the trigger” but failed to launch, it was beaten by Indonesia.

On the upside, however, local analysts are expecting the monetary authorities to further reduce the reserve requirements to mitigate the tightening liquidity. Watching how the wheels of business churn.