THE country’s economy grew faster at 6.3 percent in the second quarter of 2024, the fastest acceleration since the first quarter of 2023, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported on Thursday, August 8, 2024.
The 6.3 percent gross domestic product (GDP) growth from April to June is higher than the 5.8 percent posted in the first quarter of 2024, bringing the GDP growth to 6.0 percent for the first half of the year, which is within the government’s target growth rate of 6.0 to 7.0 percent for 2024.
The services sector has the highest contribution to the GDP with 4.2 percentage points, followed by the industry sector with 2.3 percent share.
The major economic sectors, industry, and services posted year-on-year solid growth in the second quarter, at 7.7 percent and 6.8 percent, respectively.
The agriculture sector experienced a year-on-year decline of 2.3 percent, which is attributed to the El Niño phenomenon.
On the demand side, the acceleration in GDP growth was driven by a significant increase in total investments by 11.5 percent due to the robust construction activities.
The National Economic and Development Authority said due to the rollout of the construction and rehabilitation projects under the administration of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., the public construction sustained double-digit growth at 21.8 percent from 12.1 percent last quarter.
He also noted the acceleration in the growth of private construction at 9.9 percent from 5.3 percent recently, particularly commercial construction at 13.6 percent from 6.8 percent.
Balisacan said there was also a significant increase of 10.7 percent in government final consumption expenditure.
This was mainly driven by the timely implementation and expanded coverage of various social protection, health, and education programs, along with preparatory activities for the 2025 National and Local Elections.
“This performance keeps our position as one of Asia's best-performing major emerging economies,” he said.
The acceleration of the Philippine economy is following behind the growth of Vietnam at 6.9 percent while leading against Malaysia at 5.8 percent, Indonesia at 5.0 percent, and China at 4.7 percent.
Balisacan also took note of the increase in the country’s employment rate which stood at 96.9 percent in June 2024, translating to a total of 50.28 million employed aged 15 years old and over who were in the labor force.
He said the government is targeting to revert inflation which was recorded at 4.4 percent in July 2024, to its longer-term downtrend to reach the government’s goal of 2 to 4 percent for 2024.
“As we have also said, the government's medium-term game plan is to implement strategic policies and programs focused on raising agricultural productivity and improving farmers' incomes and competitiveness through a whole-of-government approach toward strengthening our infrastructure, logistics networks, and markets for agricultural inputs and outputs,” said Balisacan.
“The Marcos administration will fast-track digitalization to enhance data-driven decision-making and drive innovation among actors in the sector and it commits to strengthening the country's disaster management to mitigate the impact of extreme weather, including the looming threat of La Niña, on our people's lives and livelihoods,” he added.
Balisacan said that keeping food inflation and interest rates manageable is expected to spur both consumption and investment activity among households and businesses, strengthening our economic growth prospects in the coming months and the medium term.
He said the administration will also continue to work to improve the purchasing power of Filipino families by creating more jobs and attract more investments. (TPM/SunStar Philippines)