THE manufacturing sector likely sustained a double-digit expansion in September, driven by domestic consumption and investment, Moody’s Analytics, a division of Moody’s Corp., said in a report over the weekend.
Moody’s predicted a 12-percent growth of industrial production in September, albeit slower than the 13.6 percent a month ago.
“Philippine industrial production growth will likely maintain its blistering pace, rising 12 percent year-on-year in September, compared with 13.6 percent in August. Rapid growth in domestic investment and consumption has been the main driver,” Moody’s said.
“Also providing a boost is the agriculture sector, which has passed the negative effects of 2015’s El Niño climate pattern,” it said. The government is set to release the manufacturing data for the month of September this week.
Reinvigorating the manufacturing sector is one of the priorities of the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte to create more jobs and attract more foreign direct investments.
In an earlier report titled Philippines: Duterte’s game plan, DBS Bank of Singapore said prioritizing the manufacturing sector would also fulfill the government’s ambition to diversify the economy from an over-dependency on services.
During the campaign period in the run-up to the presidential elections in May this year, Duterte promised to create more jobs to lessen the unemployed in the country. The unemployment rate last year declined to 6.3 percent from 6.8 percent a year ago.
The Philippine Statistics Authority’s Monthly Integrated Survey of Selected Industries for August 2016 showed that the Volume of Production Index grew 13.6 percent, a significant improvement from the 2.2-percent growth a year ago.
The National Economic and Development Authority said the VoPI growth also pushed the three-month moving average growth rate grew further at 11.8 percent, a sign of expansion and recovery of the sector from the relatively weak performance last year.