No downgrade for Phl – WB

MANILA, Philippines - World Bank president Jim Yong Kim sees the Philippines as the next “Asian miracle” and will not downgrade its forecast for the local economy this year, a good news for President Aquino amid the controversy involving the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) and his falling satisfaction and approval ratings.

“You know, we downgraded the overall global growth forecast from 3.2 percent to 2.8 percent, but we did not downgrade our forecast for the Philippine economy. We think it’s going to hold steady at around 6.4 percent with a lot of upside going into the future. So I just will say again maintain these reforms, continue on the path that you’re going on, and I think the future is very bright for the Philippines,” Kim said in a speech during the Daylight Dialogue: The Good Governance Challenge held at the Rizal Hall of the Malacañang Palace.

 “Some of the things that we talked about in our doing business report are all things that can be improved here. But again, among the most important things you can do is tackle corruption and that’s one of the things that the government is doing better than just about any other government in the world. And so, if it continues down that path, if it continues making the reforms that it has already committed to do, if it continues to manage monetary policy and maintain the strong macroeconomic fundamentals, I see very strong growth,” he added.

He noted that 90 percent of all jobs in developing countries were created by the private sector and the Aquino government could do more working with the private sector to enhance its vibrancy and job creation.

“Yes, I think there always are things that you can do to improve the business environment. Are there things that can be done in terms of, you know, focusing, for example, on small and medium enterprises so that jobs-better jobs can be created? Yes. So I still think that there are a lot of things that the government can focus on. I think that more competition for the private sector,” Kim said.

He added that in South Korea, many people felt that the key to South Korean development was industrial policy.

“You know, scholars now are saying that one of the really important aspects of the Korean development process was that the rise of the conglomerate. The chaebols happened in a way that competition among them was extremely intense and having that competition among those large groups inside Korea prepared them to compete in the outside world,” Kim said.

The WB chief praised Aquino for being on the forefront of the Philippines’ transformation, for doubling government budgets for social services and made performance informed budgeting the norm.

For instance, Kim said the Philippines is now using electronic procurement technology to encourage citizens to be observers in all stages of the bidding process; and just recently, started the use of geo-tagging.

Similar tools are now being used to monitor assistance for people affected by Super Typhoon Yolanda, he said.

“Your commitment to transparency is a beacon for the nation of East Asia and beyond,” Kim said.

For his part, Aquino said the government is trying to accelerate execution of projects and to advance the procurement process.

“Some people might misconstrue that again. We are not actually almost procuring something without the authority of Congress. That is not the point. But all of the-what are the necessary steps? The pre-qualification, the design, the invitation-well, the preparation of the invitation to bid-all of those steps that normally happen after you get the authority to spend, which takes between four to six months, we’re trying to cut that down so that they are ready to implement it by the time Congress approves our request to spend X amounts of money,” Aquino said.