PH still on track to hit upper middle income status by 2025 despite cuts in this year's growth target
The Philippines remains on track to achieve its goal to be an upper middle income country by 2025 amid reduction on this year's gross domestic product (GDP) growth target to 6 to 7 percent from 6.5 to 7.5 percent.
This was announced by National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Secretary Arsenio Balisacan in a Palace briefing on Thursday.
"Yes, we are (still on track) because the six to seven percent is quite a high growth that still falls within the realm of possibility for our entry to the upper middle income class," Balisacan said.
"The threshold of almost 4,500 US dollars in gross national income per capita should have been there," he added.
Balisacan announced that the "DBCC (Development Budget Coordinating Committee) revised the Gross Domestic Product or GDP growth target for 2024 to 6.0-7.0 percent from 6.5-7.5 percent."
He said the "DBCC also revised the growth target for 2025 to 6.5-7.5 percent from 6.5-8.0 percent and retained the target of 6.5-8.0 percent for 2026 to 2028."
"Robust macroeconomic fundamentals will support this growth trajectory. These growth targets will sustain the country’s position as one of the fastest-growing emerging economies in the Asia Pacific region. Moreover, at this pace of growth, we are still on track to reducing poverty incidence from 18.1 percent in 2021 to single-digit level in 2028," he added.
Balisacan stressed that the adjustment on the GDP growth target for this year was made to "take account of the performance in the last fiscal year 2023" and "to recognize the recent developments in the global economy particularly trade and finance."
"We have seen their continuing slowdown of the global economy and also taking into account the uptick in oil prices and as well as the trends in the inflation, interest rates not just in the Philippines but also in other countries particularly all major trading partners with the US," he said.
Balisacan admitted that lower GDP will affect the collection of the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bureau of Customs but he noted that "improving tax administration will be the biggest source of that increase in revenues."
"The program as proposed and as approved and confirmed by our Cabinet, by the President, still shows quite a robust growth of tax revenues particularly those coming from BIR and the Bureau of Customs," he said.
"In other words, even with the slightly lower growth forecast, revenues from these two agencies are expected to rise, to increase," he added. Robina Asido/DMS
