| Photo from Cebu City PIO
CEBU CITY, Philippines — The Cebu City government is now debt-free.
The city has received a certificate of full payment from the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) two weeks after it paid the balance for its loan for the South Reclamation Project now called South Road Properties (SRP) amounting to P904,898,606.27.
A turnover ceremony was held on Monday, Sept. 19, 2022.
Lawyer Jerone Castillo, head of the city’s Local Finance Committee, said that with the receipt of the certificate, the city government can now be officially declared as debt-free.
Aside from its SRP loan made in 1995, the city government do not have any other loans with other other banks or financial institutions.
“Mao ra g’yod na ang atong existing loan. So, with the full payment of that SRP loan, the city is [now] debt-free,” Castillo told CDN Digital.
READ: Cebu City fully pays SRP loan after 27 years
It was in 1995 when the city government took a loan amounting to ¥12,291,866,796 (or P4,651,960,439.40) from the Japan International Cooperation Agency through the LBP to develop the SRP.
The loan that was payable for 30 years or until 2025, incuded a P4,114,651,500,23 allocation that was released from March 28, 1997 to June 25, 2004 to fund the civil works of the reclamation project and P537,308,939.17, released from April 12, 1996, until June 25, 2004, for consultancy fees.
The city made its first loan repayment on Feb. 20, 2005.
The city’s loan, including its interest, is due on August 20, 2025.
Castillo said that Mayor Michael Rama was really determined to have the city’s loan paid in full during his first one hundred days in office.
Rama was again elected mayor of Cebu City in May 2022.
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