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Al-Bouri: “Is It Appropriate for Governments to Borrow to Finance Consumer Spending?”
Written by: Banking Expert Noaman Al-Bouri
Financing Development vs. Passing Today’s Burdens on to Future Generations
Not all government borrowing is necessarily negative, nor is public debt necessarily an indicator of poor fiscal management. Developed and developing countries alike resort to borrowing to finance projects and programs that may be necessary to achieve economic growth.
But the real question is not: Can the government borrow?
The more important questions are: Why is it borrowing? Where will the money go? And who will ultimately bear the cost of this borrowing in the future?
A clear distinction must therefore be made between borrowing to finance development and investment, and borrowing to finance consumption and recurring current expenditure.
Borrowing for the Future
Government borrowing can be a positive economic tool when it is directed toward creating new assets, developing infrastructure, improving electricity, water, transportation, and telecommunications networks, developing education and healthcare, supporting productive sectors, and investing in technology and human capital.
In such cases, borrowed money does not simply disappear once it is spent. Instead, it is transformed into an asset or productive capacity capable of generating economic value for many years.
If a government borrows to build a power plant, port, transportation network, digital infrastructure, or productive project capable of generating an economic return, it is not merely spending—it is building future capacity that can contribute to higher production, income, employment, and public revenues.
This is the type of borrowing that can be economically justified: today’s debt in exchange for an asset or economic capacity that benefits future generations.
But Borrowing to Finance Consumption Is a Different Story
The problem begins when borrowing becomes a means of financing salaries, subsidies, transfers, and recurring government expenditure that is repeated every year without a corresponding increase in the state’s productive capacity.
In this case, the government consumes today’s resources while leaving the principal debt and its associated costs for future years.
Put more simply:
The impact of the spending ends, but the debt does not.
A salary financed through debt is paid and its immediate economic impact ends; subsidies are consumed, and current expenditures recur. However, the financial obligation created by the borrowing remains, potentially accompanied by debt-servicing costs.
Borrowing therefore becomes, rather than a tool for building the future, a means of passing today’s problems on to the future.
What About Sukuk?
Some may argue that issuing sukuk differs from conventional borrowing, and this is true from a structural, Sharia, and legal perspective.
However, we should not confuse the form of financing with the economic outcome of how it is used.
If sukuk are issued to finance a productive project or a genuine economic asset capable of creating value and future returns, they can be an important tool for financing development.
But if sukuk are used, directly or indirectly, to finance a recurring consumption deficit or current expenditures that do not generate future income, changing the name of the financing instrument does not change the substance of the problem.
Sukuk are not a magic solution to a deficit.
What matters is not whether the financing is called bonds or sukuk, but the fundamental question:
What did we acquire with this debt, and what will remain after the money has been spent?
When Borrowing Becomes a Vicious Cycle
The greatest risk lies not only in the size of the debt, but in using debt in a way that creates a need for more debt.
This can create a dangerous cycle:
Borrowing → financing consumption → failure to create new productive capacity → failure to generate additional revenues → need for new borrowing → servicing previous debts → increased pressure on the budget → more borrowing.
Over time, a state may find itself borrowing not to finance development, but to finance part of the burden of its previous debts.
At that point, debt shifts from being a development tool to becoming a burden on public finances.
Does This Mean Borrowing to Finance Current Expenditure Is Always Prohibited?
Certainly not.
Under exceptional circumstances, governments may be forced to borrow to address temporary crises, disasters, economic shocks, or a sharp but temporary decline in revenues.
However, there is a fundamental difference between borrowing as a temporary bridge to overcome a crisis and turning borrowing into a permanent source of financing a structural deficit in the current budget.
The former may be an exceptional and carefully considered decision.
The latter is a dangerous indication that the public finance model itself is unsustainable.
Libya: The Question Is More Urgent
In Libya’s case, this issue becomes even more important.
Libya possesses an exceptional natural resource in oil, but oil itself does not constitute a diversified and sustainable economy.
If the state continues to use oil revenues solely to finance consumption while simultaneously resorting to borrowing to finance a growing deficit, it is not solving the problem. Rather, it is postponing it and increasing its cost.
Oil wealth should not merely be a source of funding for consumption. It should serve as capital for building an economy capable of remaining sustainable when oil revenues decline or the resource is depleted.
This means directing a larger share of resources toward investment in infrastructure, energy, education, healthcare, technology, agriculture, industry, logistics, the digital economy, and the private sector.
It also means developing projects capable of creating genuine employment, increasing domestic production, reducing dependence on imports, and broadening the revenue base beyond oil.
Before Borrowing, We Must Ask Five Questions
Before any government approves new borrowing, there should be clear answers to at least five questions:
- Why are we borrowing?
- Where will the money go?
- Will the spending create a new asset or productive capacity?
- How will the project generate an economic return or future revenues?
- Who will bear the cost of this debt, and what will this debt leave for future generations?
If we cannot answer these questions clearly, we should stop before borrowing.
The Rule We Should All Agree On
Governments should not treat borrowing as simply an additional source of revenue.
