SECOND QUARTER OF 2017
Economic growth slowed to 6.5 percent year-on-year in the second quarter despite a boost from government spending on public goods and services as private sector investments lagged behind, the government reported Thursday.
The gross domestic product (GDP) expansion during the April to June period was lower than the 7.1-percent growth posted in the same period last year, although a bit faster than the 6.4 percent in the first quarter.
Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia nonetheless pointed out that the Philippines remained among “the best-performing economies in Asia,” as the second-quarter GDP growth surpassed Vietnam’s 6.2 percent and Indonesia’s 5 percent.
“This puts the country as either the second or third-fastest growing major Asian economy, next only to China whose growth rate is 6.9-percent growth in the second quarter. Malaysia and Thailand have not yet released their data, but we can expect that they will be lower than the performance of the Philippines for this quarter,” said Pernia, who heads state planning agency National Economic and Development Authority.
The second quarter also marked the eighth-straight quarter that GDP growth exceeded 6 percent, Philippine Statistics Authority data showed.
Pernia said that the historically slower expansion in the year following an election year was still evident, although the gap between the growth rates last year and this year was narrower than those after the presidential elections in 2010 and 2004.
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