Cebu Business Club slates mid-year economic briefing

CEBU, Philippines - The Cebu Business Club (CBC) will hold a mid-year economic briefing in Cebu to update the business community and Cebuanos on what lies ahead of the climbing economy and how to prepare and take advantage of the positive economic turn-around.

“We were happy to know that the Philippine economy finally bested all the other countries in Asia when it grew by 7.8 percent in the first quarter of the year. We believe that this fortunate course of event was greatly helped by the superb ability of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to guide the financial sector and the various asset markets with the well-timed and careful calibration of its various monetary policy instruments to influence the level of money supply, interest rate, exchange rate and other macroeconomic variables,” said CBC president Dondi Joseph.

To be held on July 26, 2013 at the Marco Polo Plaza Hotel, economist Ma. Almasara Cyd N. Tuano-Amador, the BSP assistant government for the Monetary Policy Sub-sector, will make her sound foresights on the recent challenges of the Philippine economy, while it has been considered to achieve its “best” in the near future.

Recently though, “we are concerned that the Philippines is again tested with the large drop in the stock market and depreciation of the peso. The new test came with the latest disturbance in the global financial market resulting from the expected ending or slowing down in the purchase of long term securities by the US Federal Reserve. Called “quantitative easing,” the Fed buys up to US$ 80 billion a year in long term securities to stimulate the US economy that remained anemic since the 2008 Great Recession. A good part of this money flows outside the US shores like the Philippines. More foreign money coming in makes the peso stronger and pushes the local stock market higher,” said Joseph.

With the latest market disturbance, what is the prospect that the Philippine economy will sustain its first quarter 7.8 percent growth in the rest of the year? To what extent are we going to be affected? Will this not jeopardize our growth target for the year and our current effort to generate more jobs and raise our income that we need to cut down our poverty?

Fluctuations in the market encourage more savings and investment when favorable and discourage the same when the trend is not favorable. No country now is immune from the impact of the fluctuations in the global financial market. With the latest market disturbance, how will the private sector respond? Will they continue to invest or disinvest? What new policy measures are undertaken by the BSP to make the domestic economy and the financial sector resilient? What happens next year?

These, and other hiccups in the economic plight of the Philippines will be answered by Amador, said Joseph.

Amador takes part in the formulation and implementation of BSP’s monetary policies. This requires her to be attuned to the most recent developments in the financial market and knowledgeable of theories that underpins BSP monetary policy actions.

“To hear from Dr. Amador will help us in Cebu to fine-tune our business plans for the rest of the year and prepare for next year to meet the new changes in the global economy,” Joseph added.

The forum is organized by the Cebu Business Club in partnership with Cebu and Mandaue Chamber of Commerce and Industries, Bosconian International Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Department of Economics of the University of San Carlos. /JOB (FREEMAN)