LAST week, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) released its biannual report on global public debt, and the news was alarming. Global public debt reached an all-time record high of $97 trillion in 2023, prompting Unctad to call on the UN to take 'urgent action' to prevent a financial crisis. While the Philippines is not among the countries considered most at risk, our own circumstances are far from ideal and should be addressed with more urgency.

To put the $97-trillion public debt figure in perspective, the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) forecast for global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024 is just over $109 trillion. That gives the world a debt-to-GDP ratio of 89 percent. For comparison, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, two countries that in recent years have been the focus of emergency interventions by the IMF and other institutions to stabilize their government finances, have debt-to-GDP ratios of 71.1 percent and 104.4 percent, respectively.