RP to achieve 2009 growth targets - Palace

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippines is faring better than most emerging economies and would be able to achieve its 2009 growth targets despite the lingering global recession, Malacañang said yesterday.

Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Augusto Santos said consumer spending helped prevent the country from sliding into recession ever since the global financial crisis in late 2008.

He said household spending was boosted by increased remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) that reached a record high of $14.3 billion from January to October this year, as well as pump priming activities of the government to stimulate the economy.

“As of now we are still aiming for that 1.8 GDP (gross domestic product) growth for the whole year but we expect to at least hit the lower end of 0.8 percent,” Santos told Palace reporters.

When asked why economic managers were expecting to achieve the lower end of the target, he said: “The lower end is mainly as a result of typhoons which have affected us, and the global economic downturn but offsetting this is Christmas spending by Filipinos and possibly early election-related spending that is already happening.”

Press Secretary Cerge Remonde cited the favo-rable reviews and forecasts of major international institutions on the Philippine economy.

He cited the report of global investment bank Goldman Sachs that said the Philippines performed better than most of the next emerging economies (N-11) during the global economic crisis.

“Within the N-11, Indonesia and the Philippines have positively surprising performance,” it said.

“The N-11 and the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are two terms coined by Goldman      Sachs several years. The investment bank considers the BRIC the fastest-growing developing economies, and the N-11 as the ones ‘worth keeping an eye on’ outside of the BRIC,” Remonde said.

For the full year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects the Philippine economy to grow by 1.5 percent, the World Bank by 1.4 percent, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) by one percent, he said.

“These (reviews) is a bit of something we welcome very much because it says a lot about the confidence on the Philippine economy. Even with (economic) downturn there is this notation of a financial giant that the Philippines is doing well,” Santos said.

“Indeed, we can say that now, more than ever, we can hold our head high as a nation holding its own in the most dynamic region in the world – the Asia-Pacific,” Remonde said.