The Finance Department said it expects the Philippine economy to sustain its high growth this year, despite the “political noise” in the first six months of the Duterte administration.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said he remained bullish about the prospects for continued high growth in 2017 and the coming years, as the government committed to pursue an accelerated spending program.
Dominguez said this would not only sustain the economic momentum but would also spread the benefits of growth to all sectors across all regions with more jobs and better living standards.
He said growth remained on the upswing on the back of rock-solid macroeconomic fundamentals.
Dominguez said the government was on track toward realizing its vision of lifting six million Filipinos from poverty and transforming the Philippines into a high middle-income country five years from now, with a per-capita gross national income of $4,100, or where Thailand and China are today.
He said the optimistic outlook on the Philippines as one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies was shared by credit raters and other international institutions such as S&P Global, the Asian Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Dominguez said the Duterte administration was committed to pursuing the congressional approval of proposed comprehensive tax reform program”•the first in 30 years”•to ensure the financial sustainability of the government’s unparalleled spending on infrastructure, human capital and social protection for the most vulnerable sectors.
He said the economy’s strong showing in the third quarter with GDP growth of 7.1 percent”•the best in three years”•was driven in part by the onset of the Duterte presidency’s strong spending on infrastructure and the recovery of the agriculture sector from the prolonged El Niño-induced drought.
“This means there will be no letup in the Duterte administration’s commitment to spending big on urban and rural infrastructure as a growth driver, to guarantee sustained high”•and inclusive”•growth,” Dominguez said.
He said the government needed to invest heavily in programs to transform the economy from a consumption- to an investment-driven one, and at a much higher level from the current investment rate of 20 percent of GDP.
This would put the Philippines at par with vibrant neighbors that were investing between 30 percent and 40 percent of their respective GDPs.
Dominguez said the Duterte administration would also remain focused on other urgent measures such as fully implementing the Reproductive Health Law, modernizing agriculture to pull down food prices while increasing farmers’ incomes and leveling the playing field for micro, small and medium scale enterprises.