PHILIPPINES
Analyst
Diwa Guinigundo
Former Central Bank Deputy GovernorDatabanks
Recent Country Insights
Business and consumer expectations mixed for the first quarter of 2024
PHILIPPINES · Report · 23 Apr 2024
Abstracting from the results of the BSP surveys of both business and consumer respondents, Q1 2024 is likely to sustain positive economic growth that may not necessarily approximate the official target of 6-7% at least for Q1 2024 due to the dominant downside risks to economic growth including th...
Philippines: Disappointing inflation numbers
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 04 Apr 2024
As we write this In Brief, the Philippine Statistics Authority is about to announce the inflation rate for March 2024 tomorrow at 9 am. We expect a higher inflation rate than January’s 2.8% and February’s 3.4% at slightly below 4.0%. This, to us, is a foregone conclusion because very little progr...
Manila's airports to transition from bad to good
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 27 Mar 2024
After years of being touted as one of the worst airports in the world, there might be hope for the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA). Its ill reputation is not surprising: from 2010-2023, the Manila International Airport Authority (MIIA) put in only P27.1 billion as capital expenditure, w...
Philippines: Jobs trend slightly reverses course
PHILIPPINES · Report · 18 Mar 2024
The Philippines’ employment rate increased slightly, to 95.5 percent in January 2024 from the 95.2 percent posted in January of the previous year. The rate was, however, lower than the 96.9 percent employment rate recorded in December 2023. Some seasonality is definitely involved here. Consider...
Banking activities rising despite high interest rates?
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 09 Mar 2024
Contrary to the expectations of many, the Philippine economy sustained its expansion at 5.6% in 2023 from an extremely robust growth of 7.6% in 2022. Indeed, this was lower than the official target of 6% - 7% and what is required to recover its previous growth path prior to the pandemic of 2020. ...
BSP not too anxious to unhinge monetary policy
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 04 Mar 2024
In a quote that could very well apply to the BSP’s inflation management, BSP Governor Eli Remolona was quoted having declared that “we want to be prepared for the dangers of rosy scenarios” when the central bank’s Financial Stability Report was rolled out to the public three weeks ago, February 1...
Cha-Cha as an economic risk
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 04 Mar 2024
In our previous report dated February 12, 2024, we raised the brewing issue of a possible break up in the UniTeam of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Vice-President Sara Duterte. The cracks were beginning to be more apparent first in the International Criminal Court (ICC) involving the Vice-Pres...
Disunity in the UniTeam
PHILIPPINES · Report · 12 Feb 2024
The Marcos Jr.-Sara Duterte alliance seemed fragile from the very beginning, but the fragility of the alliance is now made more apparent in at least two major developments recently. The first is the ICC (International Criminal Court) investigation of ex-President Rodrigo Duterte. In this, both M...
Fiscal sustainability over growth in the Philippines?
PHILIPPINES · Report · 05 Feb 2024
We were most disappointed that Socio-Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan should explain that lower public spending in the last quarter of 2023, and in the same context, its flat growth rate for the whole year of 2023, was due to the government’s fiscal consolidation plan. The government...