Suppose you are in charge of the financial department of your company and you have to decide whether to borrow short or long term. Checking the news, you realize that the government is about to engage in a major infrastructure plan in the near future.

a. Predict what will happen to interest rates.
b. Will you advise borrowing short or long term?

A. The interest rate will likely go up if government embark on major infrastructure plan in the future. The reason for the rise is that it`s assumed that government will borrow to finance the infrastructure plan and when government borrows, there will be less money in the economy which will make credit scarce and interest rate to rise because of the depleting credit level in the economy.

B. I will advise to borrow on short term because of the impending rise in interest rate. If borrow on short term, the fluctuation in the interest rate will unlikely affect the short term facility. In contrast, if borrow on long term, the impeding rise in the interest rate might increase finance cost for the firm in servicing the facility and also erode the facility value.