BAGUIO CITY—The economy of the Cordillera Administrative Region rose by 3.7 percent last year due to the robust growth of the services and industry sectors, a report from the Cordillera office of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA-CAR) stated. The regional economy grew by 3.3 percent increase in 2014.
Villafe Alibuyog, PSA-CAR regional director, revealed the region’s industry sector accounted for half of the total output at 50.5 percent, followed by the services sector at 40 percent and agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing (AHFF) at 9.5 percent.
Alibuyog said the percentage of services in the total output of the region increased while the shares of industry and AHFF decreased.
“Industry grew at a faster pace from 2.6 percent in 2014 to 3.2 percent last year due to the growth of manufacturing and construction. Manufacturing is still the biggest contributor, accelerating from 0.9 percent growth in 2014 to 4.4 percent in 2015. Construction also grew but on a slower pace from 8.3 percent to 1.9 percent,” she stressed.
On the other hand, the PSA-CAR official claimed electricity, gas and water supply (EGWS) contracted from 4.6 percent to negative 8.7 percent while mining and quarrying reversed from 19.9 percent in 2014 to negative 4.0 last year.
According to her, services accelerated from 5.1 percent in 204 to 6.5 percent last year while the sub-industry of other services, which includes tourism, accelerated the fastest from two percent to 7.4 percent last year, followed by transportation, storage and communication from 4.6 percent to seven percent and real estate, renting and business activities from 6.8 percent to seven percent.
Alibuyog emphasized the rest of the sub industries slowed down with trade from 8.2 percent in 2014 to 7.2 percent last year, financial intermediation from 6.6 percent to six percent, and public administration and defense from 4.2 percent to 1.4 percent.
Relatedly, AHFF further contracted from negative 0.3 percent in 2014 to negative 4.1 percent last year due to the negative growth of the agriculture and forestry sub-industry which further contracted by 4.1 percent in 2015.
Alibuyog bared services contributed most to the region’s overall growth rate at 2.5 percentage points followed by industry at 1.6 percentage points.
However, AHFF pulled down the region’s growth rate by 0.4 percentage points because of its negative growth over the past two years.
Alibuyog added the region’s economy realized positive growth over the past four years with a two-percent growth in 2012 before significantly increasing to 5.4 percent in 2013 and dropped to 3.3 percent in 2014 and then increased to 3.7 percent last year.