NEDA chief: 2013 GDP growth could reach 7%

The government sees the economy growing by 7 percent for the whole of 2013 despite the damage from a string of natural calamities including Typhoon Yolanda, the strongest typhoon to make landfall on record.

“Taking into consideration all of these developments in the Philippine economy including those on the external, monetary and fiscal fronts, we expect GDP (gross domestic product) to hit the upper limit of our growth target for 2013,” Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan told reporters in a briefing Tuesday.

The 2013 full-year growth would have hit 7.3 to 7.5 percent, “without all these crises,” Balisacan said.

The Philippine economy grew by 6.8 percent in 2012.

Last Nov. 8, Typhoon Yolanda smashed central Philippines, flattening coastal towns and cities and killing over 6,000 people. A month earlier, on Oct. 15, a magnitude-7.2 earthquake rocked the Central Visayas region.

The government’s 2013 growth forecast is already respectable, and will “still be the best in the Southeast Asian region,” said Balisacan, who heads the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).

The Philippine economy expanded at the fastest rate in Southeast Asia of 7.4 percent in the first three quarters.

Fourth quarter growth is projected at 4.1 to 5.9 percent, a sharp slowdown from the actual 7 percent in the previous quarter, due to damage from the string of natural disasters, said Balisacan.

However, the new estimate for 2013 is still within the government’s estimated GDP growth for the year of 6 to 7 percent.

The economic toll from Typhoon Yolanda is expected to spill over into the first quarter of 2014, even as effects of reconstruction will start to kick in.

“Although losses in agriculture resulting from Yolanda devastation is expected to reduce growth in the first quarter, reconstruction efforts are presumed to contribute to growth,” Balisacan said, refusing to give a ballpark figure for growth next quarter.

For 2014, Balisacan said the government maintains that the economy may grow within its 6.5 to 7.5 percent growth target. — BM, GMA News