Claim: Department of Finance (DOF) Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said the Philippines can borrow trillions of dollars from the World Bank and future generations would bear the burden of paying it.
A graphic with a photo of Dominguez contains the supposed quote, “We have the money, we can borrow up to 100 trillion US dollars from the World Bank and don’t worry, we will not be the one who will be paying but instead it would be the future generations.”
“Yesterday is the past and tomorrow is the future. But today is a gift that’s why we call it a present,” the quote continues. Dominguez supposedly said this on April 9.
Facebook user Josh Naz shared this graphic on April 10. As of writing, it has received 74 reactions and 24 comments, and has been shared 41 times.
A reader flagged this post in the Fact-checking in the Philippines Facebook group for verification.
Rating: FALSE
The facts: Dominguez did not say what was attributed to him in the graphic, which manipulated an actual graphic of a news organization.
No news reports or official statements support the quote attributed to Dominguez.
Instead, the graphic is a manipulated version of a quote card posted by the Philippine Daily Inquirer on April 9. It contains Dominguez’s actual quote during a late night address by President Rodrigo Duterte that day.
Dominguez projected that the Philippine economy would be affected by the coronavirus outbreak.
“Ngayon, itong COVID-19 has hit us in a very hard way. Ang katotohan lang, ang ating estimate natin our GDP (gross domestic product) growth will be 0% or -1%,” said Dominguez. (Now, this COVID-19 has hit us in a very hard way. To be honest, our estimated GDP growth will be 0% to -1%.)
Rappler earlier fact-checked on April 7 a similarly manipulated Inquirer quote card featuring Queen Elizabeth II who supposedly “praised” Duterte for his administration’s response to the coronavirus. – Michael Bueza/Rappler.com
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