Economy

(Last part)   THE Philippines’ disappointing first-quarter economic performance has shattered the official consensus about the country’s supposed resilience amid the worst financial crisis since the 1930s Great Depression.Before the shocking admission that it was “teetering into recession,” the country’s economic managers were unanimous in saying four things.

In January, a government official (I won’t name him so he’s not further embarrassed than I hope he is already) said: “The Philippines is feeling the impact of the global crisis. But our economy is tough, and this has been acknowledged by many rating agencies. The economy will be even more resilient as pesos are…

Calamity fund tapped to boost fight vs. A (H1N1)   THE continued spread of Influenza A(H1N1) in the Philippines may slow economic growth in the second quarter as Filipino consumers are likely to defer going to the mall to spend, according to pundits.

The economy will not go into recession and is expected to grow 2.5 to 4 percent this year, according to economist Bernardo Villegas.

MANILA, Philippines – University of Asia and the Pacific (UAP) professor and economist Bernardo Villegas expects the country’s economy to grow by close to six percent in the fourth quarter of this year.

AMID a slowing economy, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has called on the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to undertake a “stress test” of local banks, similar to what its US counterpart, the Fed, did for American lenders that saw their capital erode due to the global financial crisis.

MANILA, Philippines – Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ralph Recto is optimistic that dollar remittances from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and an improvement in the performance of the export industry would help the country achieve the government’s latest economic growth projection for 2009.

Filipino consumers remained pessimistic in the second quarter as result of the expected lower household income, particularly among middle and low-income families, resulting from the economic slowdown, the central bank reported Thursday.

MANILA, Philippines – Government economic managers lowered yesterday the country’s economic growth projection for 2009 to between 0.8 percent and 1.8 percent from the earlier target of between 3.1 percent and 4.1 percent on account of the larger impact of the global financial crisis.

MANILA, Philippines – Consumer confidence took a major beating in the second quarter of this year as private households saw dimming prospects for the country and for their own families over the next six months.

THE International Monetary Fund expects the economy to contract by 1 percent this year, revising its forecast of a 1-percent growth because of disappointing first-quarter numbers.

The revived Buy Pinoy, Buy Local campaign is slowly gaining support, with the House of Representatives and the Nacionalista Party (NP) led by Sen. Manuel Villar Jr. among the first ones endorsing it.

MANILA, Philippines – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects the country’s economic growth to decline by one percent this year before posting a modest 2.25-percent expansion in 2010.

The Philippine economy is expected to contract this year because of weak remittance inflows and export earnings despite the increase in government spending and lower interest rates, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Wednesday.

Diokno, Salceda says 2nd quarter may get worse   The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) on Monday described the worse-than-expected first quarter economic growth results as “a mild recession.”

MANILA, Philippines – A survey by a global market research firm Synovate said that 44 percent of Filipinos living in Metro Manila, North and South Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao believe that the economy is weak but will improve soon.

MANILA, Philippines—American investment banking giant Merrill Lynch has scaled down its economic growth outlook for the Philippines this year to 1.4 percent from 3.1 percent following an anemic first-quarter output.

MANILA, Philippines – The Joint Foreign Chambers of the Philippines (JFC) is not expecting the economy to slip into a recession this year, thanks to the country’s strong remittance inflows and revenues from the information technology (IT) services sector.

BY ALL INDICATIONS, the Philippine economy is already in recession. With last week’s announcement of an insignificant 0.4-percent first quarter growth in the economy, government statisticians forthrightly described the economy as “teetering into recession.”

MANILA, Philippines—The global economic downturn, which recently pulled the Philippines down to its slowest growth in a decade, will result in the country’s failure to meet its poverty-reduction goal by 2010 and is expected to increase the number of poor Filipinos.

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines will not go into recession despite the slow growth registered in the first quarter of the year, Malacañang said yesterday.

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines may slip into a recession this year as economic growth – as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP) – inched up a mere 0.4 percent in the first quarter of the year compared to the same period in 2008, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) reported yesterday.

The country is three months away from a technical recession after the economy shrank by 2.3 percent in the first quarter compared with the final three months of last year due mainly to the government’s failure to deliver a massive pump-priming commitment.

MANILA, Philippines – Despite numerous indications that the United States economy would start to recover and post positive growth in the third quarter of this year, the country’s economic managers prefer to remain conservative with their growth targets.

The Philippines is not ready yet to adopt a “social market economy” system as it does not have the necessary conditions in place, economists said.

(Excerpted from the milestone paper by the Chief Labor and Employment Officer of the Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics (BLES), Department of Labor and Employment(DOLE), Manila, Philippines “Redefining the Labor Force Framework: Some Inputs from the Philippine Experience.” The paper was prepared for the seminar on “Employment and unemployment: Revisiting the relevance and conceptual…

MANILA, Philippines – Consumer confidence is higher in the Philippines than other countries with six out of 10 Filipinos saying that there is no significant drop in their personal finances despite the global economic slowdown, according to a survey conducted by AC Nielsen.

A high official of the National Economic and Development Authority certainly thinks a case can be made for saying so. Key indicators suggest that “the worst seems over … for the Philippine economy,” said NEDA Deputy Director General Rolando Tungpalan the other day.

MANILA, Philippines—Hardly anybody believes that our economy will not continue growing this year. That’s good news. Even as Singapore and Thailand have already suffered severe contractions, we are among those in East Asia still expected to grow positively, albeit much more slowly. People may differ on how much they expect the Philippine economy to grow…

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippine economy, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP), is likely to grow by four percent this year or within the revised GDP forecast of 3.1 percent to 4.1 percent, a ranking National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) official said yesterday.