IHS Markit sees the Philippine economy growing by 7 percent this year driven by private consumption and government infrastructure investments.
Ceferino Rodolfo, managing head of the Board of Investments (BOI) in a statement said this was the forecast of Rajiv Biswas, executive director and APAC chief economist of IHS at an Economic Outlook Briefing organized by the BOI on Jan. 26, 2022.
“For the Philippines, we are expecting rapid growth in 2022 due to further progress towards normalization of the economy,” Biswas said.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, the economy grew 7.7 percent year- on- year, boosting full-year growth to 5.6 percent.
A key factor that will improve the attractiveness of the Philippines economy over the next decade is the burgeoning size of the domestic consumer market, Biswas said.
IHS Markit had projected the Philippinesto become one of Asia’s $1 trillion economies by 2033 which Biswas said will make the country more attractive for foreign direct investments in manufacturing and infrastructure.
“Foreign investors will increasingly focus on the opportunities created by the fast-growing domestic consumer market in the Philippines, in addition to its attractions as a hub for producing manufacturing exports such as electronics,” he added.
Biswas said the impact of the pandemic is expected to slowly diminish during 2022 helped by progressive vaccine rollouts which would help to support firm positive growth of the global economy.
But Biswas said while the Philippines has made an early start with its booster rollout, it still has a long way to go to provide booster shots to a high share of the population, while Singapore and South Korea remain at the forefront of the booster rollout in the region. IRMA ISIP
