FINANCE Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said yesterday that the country is on its way to achieving its targets for high growth and financial inclusion for the rest of the Duterte presidency.
Dominguez said an even more aggressive spending from hereon on the “Build, Build, Build” program and other poverty-reduction initiatives would let the Duterte Administration hit its target of a GDP (gross domestic product) expansion of seven percent or better and a reduced poverty-incidence rate of 14 percent over the medium term.
“President Duterte’s commitment to attaining an investment-led and inclusive economy via a massive public spending strategy would usher in what the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has forecast to be the ‘golden age’ of the Philippines’ economic growth,” said Dominguez, following yesterday’s announcement by the Philippine Statistical Authority (PSA) of a GDP growth of 6.8 percent in the year’s first quarter.
The PSA reported that the industry sector recorded the fastest growth at 7.9 percent, while the services sector expanded 7.0 percent and agriculture. 1.5 percent.
According to the PSA, the services sector had the highest contribution to GDP growth with 4.0 percentage points, followed by industry with 2.7 percentage points and agriculture with 0.1 percentage points.
Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia noted that this quarter’s GDP growth was the 10th straight quarter of economic expansion at above 6.5 percent.
“Parenthetically, if not for the Q1 2017 to Q1 2018 rate of increase in inflation, real GDP growth could have been well within our growth range target of 7 – 8 percent,” Pernia said in a briefing yesterday. He noted that the Philippines remains one of the best performing economies in the region, next to Vietnam’s 7.4 percent growth, the same as China, and higher than Indonesia’s 5.1 percent.
Pernia is hopeful that the the growth range target of 7-8 percent is achievable, with domestic demand expected to increase due to the approved tax reform package. He, however, said investor and consumer confidence needs a boost to sustain growth.
Pernia also said they need to address the rising sources of inflation. In the short term, he said hastening the release of the unconditional cash transfer to the poorest 50 percent of households and the Pantawid Pasada subsidy for jeepney drivers.
He also urged Congress to amend the Agricultural Tariffication Act and lift quantitative restrictions on rice, saying it will reduce the retail price of rice by as much as P4 to P7 per kilo.
“We also need to restructure the National Food Authority to rid it of its import monopoly and trading functions, so that it can focus on buffer stocking to meet emergencies. This reform is necessary for NFA to focus on its function of maintaining a national buffer stock for food security, and refrain from rice trading to avoid distorting the market,” he said. (MEA)