The Philippine economy grew at 6.3 percent in the second quarter, the fastest growth rate since the first quarter of previous year, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported on Thursday.

PSA Undersecretary Dennis Mapa said: '"The last one higher is Q1 (quarter one) just recently last year 6.4 ".

National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said the 6.3 percent growth in the second quarter is "faster than the adjusted 5.8 percent growth rate recorded in the first quarter of 2024."

"This significant development brings our real GDP growth to 6 percent for the first half of the year, keeping us on track to achieve our target growth rate of 6 to 7 percent for 2024," he said.

Balisacan said the economy should grow by at least 6 percent in the second half to attain the target growth of 6 to 7 percent.

"As I said the first half is already 6 percent and we are aiming for 6 to 7 percent for the end of the year, so the second half would have to grow by at least 6 percent to fall within that range of the target," he said.

Balisacan said the growth target for 2024 can be attained if decline in the inflation will occur as "inflation is a very very strong determinant of household spending".

"In addition of course we need to work harder to ensure that the labor market will continue to be robust and more importantly that higher quality jobs are generated at a faster phase and that will mean that we need to continue focusing on investments and ensuring that investment will grow rapidly, massively to create those high quality jobs," he said.

In his report, Mapa noted that "services contributed the highest growth of 4.2 percentage points" to the overall growth "followed by Industry that contributed 2.3 percentage point while agriculture, forestry and fishing contributed -0.2 percentage point".

"In 16 sectors of GDP, construction recorded the highest growth at 16.0 percent in the second quarter, followed by transportation and storage that increased to 14.8 percent, other services that grew to 10.5 percent and accommodation and food service activities that improved to 10.4 percent," he said.

Mapa added that the "sectors with high contribution to the increase of GDP in the second quarter of 2024 are constructions that contribute 1.3 percentage points, wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles that contribute 1.0 percentage point and financial and insurance activity that contributed 0.8 percentage points." Robina Asido/DMS