“I told you not to go to, you go to. Now look at.”

Cebu City appears headed to go into another multi-billion-peso debt. This after Mayor Tomas Osmeña softened up to an offer by the Land Bank of the Philippines to lend the city that amount to finance its infrastructure projects. As if to calm public jitters, Osmeña said the debt will only be transitory as he expects to sell off another tract of land in the city-owned South Road Properties.

The problem with this proposition is that the city does not really have to go into another huge debt, especially if it is ostensibly to bankroll infrastructure projects that have not even been identified. The way it looks to most people is that the city first borrows money and then thinks of some ways to spend it. Now that is not very sound fiscal management anyway you look at it.

In fact, it never occurred to the city to borrow money until the Land Bank offered to do so. Now, that is not something anyone can blame Land Bank for because that is what banks are supposed to do. They are in the business of lending. Indeed, Land Bank ought to be congratulated for getting the mayor attracted to its proposition. But just because the bank is doing its job doesn’t mean the mayor should not do his.

And the job of the mayor is, always, to protect the interests of the city and its people. And it is not in the interest of Cebu City and the Cebuanos for City Hall to go into another huge debt if it does not have to. And it does not have to. It did not seek the loan to finance infrastructure projects. The bank offered it the loan in case it has infrastructure projects that needed financing.

The city does not have infrastructure projects that need financing, at least not of the kind that needs such huge amounts of money. The city has gotten used to its brand of infrastructure services like patching up a few roads here and there with asphalt. The people have come to expect no more. It has reached the point where they have resigned to their fate. If the city pushes through with the loan, Cebuanos can only look at it with either derision or suspicion.

And why take out a loan that is, in the way the mayor explained it, only transitory in nature? Why not wait until the city sells what it intends to sell out of the SRP and eliminate the middleman altogether? Why go into a loan and pay interest when you are expecting money anyway, money that is intended for something that is not yet even there? Reminds one of a saying about courting complications: “I told you not to go to, you go to. Now look at.”