HERE is something most of us probably share: At some point, we have had to raise funds for something.
Raffle tickets. Red velvet crinkles. The occasional cupcake, or whatever creative sellable thing an organization could turn into cash.
When I was in grade school, our teachers asked us to sell tickets as part of a fundraising drive for a swimming pool the school was planning to build. The pool was eventually built. By then, I had already graduated from high school in the same institution.
I do not remember this with bitterness. Looking back, it may have been my earliest lesson in public finance: Sometimes we pay in advance for things that arrive after our turn.
Countries work the same way. Every generation inherits something from those before it: roads, schools, ports, institutions, debts, and promises made in its name before it had any say in the matter. For the ordinary Filipino, inheritance is not just family land or a business passed down. It is also a share of the national debt, a stake in aging infrastructure, and a pension system whose promises will be tested precisely when we grow old.
That share has grown steadily across administrations. In 2005, national government outstanding debt stood at roughly P3.85 trillion. By early 2016, just under P6 trillion. By end-March 2026, the Bureau of the Treasury placed it at P18.49 trillion.
The country grew over that period too, from roughly 85 million Filipinos in 2005 to more than 112 million today. But population growth did not keep pace with obligations carried across time. The implied share moved from roughly P45,000 per Filipino two decades ago to around P164,000 today. The debt-to-GDP ratio at the close of the first quarter of 2026, at 65.2 percent, was close to where it was in the mid-2000s.
Debt itself is not the problem. Every functioning country borrows. Roads, schools, ports and water systems are easier to build with patient capital than with cash on hand, and a citizen who pays taxes and contributes to pension funds has every reason to accept that obligation, provided something working comes back.
Much of public finance operates on a similar logic to “buy now, pay later,” except citizens often do the opposite. We pay now and hope the benefits arrive later.
That is the actual social contract. We pay; the state delivers. We carry the debt; the train arrives, the hospital opens, the pension cheque clears. The bargain breaks down only when the payments continue, but the delivery does not.
And the borrowing is not only for steel and concrete. Multilateral loans from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have, for more than 15 years, helped finance the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), cash transfers reaching roughly four million of the poorest households, on the condition that children stay in school and receive regular health checks. Pandemic emergency cash subsidies were likewise debt-financed. When public debate flattens debt into waste, it loses sight of what the debt has been buying: the cash in a mother’s hand, the immunization in a child’s record, the school attendance that breaks an intergenerational poverty cycle.
Consider the major transport projects currently under construction: the North-South Commuter Railway, the Metro Manila Subway, and MRT-7, among others. These are ongoing, debt-financed projects expected to shape mobility for decades. The question is not whether we borrowed. We did. The question is whether they will arrive on time, work as designed, and serve the people whose taxes helped make them possible, or whether the next generation inherits the loan without fully inheriting the railway.
The same pattern shows up in the pension system. SSS contribution rates have climbed steadily, and even with those increases, recent actuarial reviews suggest the fund’s life is shorter than earlier projections assumed. Contributions today are raised to keep promises made years ago, while the promises being made today are being quietly repriced for those who will retire decades from now. Retirement is not only a number in a fund report. It is whether the system you paid into is still there when your turn arrives.
The problem is not paying in advance. Every functioning society does that. The problem is when delivery never fully arrives.
The ordinary Filipino who pays taxes, contributes to pension funds, and lines up for public services has a right to this accounting, not as a technicality, but as a citizen being asked to trust a system across time. Trust is not automatic. It has to be earned through delivery.
So be skeptical when borrowing is called development without a clear explanation of what it builds, who it serves, and when it delivers. Be vigilant when costs rise without accountability and when timelines slip without consequence. Demand the accounting, because the bill, eventually, becomes yours.
The swimming pool was eventually built. I did not get to use it, but someone probably did. That is enough for a school memory. It is not enough for a country.
For every public project, loan, and pension promise, the question should be simple: Did it arrive, did it work, and was it worth the bill?
Charlene Morales graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) program in 2025. Trained in civil engineering and economics, she works on infrastructure and development, with a particular interest in how infrastructure expands opportunity and the freedom to live with dignity.