High-growth path requires P180B

THE Aquino administration has to raise P180 billion in investments a year to attain a higher economic growth path for the next six years and beyond, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said.

NEDA Director-General and Socioeconomic Planning Secrertary Cayetano Paderanga told reporters that such an amount was crucial to meeting the growth rate of between 7 percent and 8 percent starting 2011.

“We are hoping that we will be able to achieve this through public and private partnership (PPP),” Paderanga said.

The NEDA is drafting a list of PPP projects.

In the first six months of this year, the economy grew by 7.9 percent from last year’s 0.9 percent.

For the second half, Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co. projected a lower 6.7 percent to 7.5 percent growth range for GDP.

The bank has revised twice its growth projections from 3.7 percent in the early part of 2010 to 5.9 percent in June, when the first quarter GDP growth came out.

“We expect that the Philippines will continue to be on the radar screens of both local and foreign investors on rising business sentiment and a benign inflation and interest rate outlook,” Marc Bautista, Metrobank’s research head, said

Paderanga had said the government targets an investment rate of 18 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year.

State-run Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) had said that the country’s investment-to-GDP ratio has deteriorated since 1994.

Last year, this ratio stood at 14 percent, lower than the previous year’s 15.2 percent and the 2007 level of 15.4 percent.

In 1994, this ratio stood at a high of 24.1 percent.

According to the United Nations World Investment Report 2010, foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to the Philippines rose 26.16 percent to $1.95 billion in 2009 from $1.54 billion in 2008.

In 2007, the country’s FDI inflows amounted to $2.92 billion.

Data from the Development and Budget Coordinating Committee (DBCC) showed that the national government’s capital outlays for next year would inch up 1.3 percent to P322.2 billion from this year’s P318.2 billion.

This amount, however, is only 3.6 percent of the country’s GDP, or down from this year’s 3.8 percent.

DBCC data showed that the total spending for 2011 stands at P1.70 trillion. –Darwin G. Amojelar, Senior Reporter with Report Fromlailany P. Gomez