RP population growth boosts economy — NEDA

The growth in the country’s population is providing a boost to the economy as this ensures more labor exports and the flow of dollar remittances from overseas Filipino workers, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said.

In last week’s year-end economic briefing attended by analysts and leaders of the business community, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and NEDA Director General Romulo Neri said that while population growth remains a concern among development analysts, it was this very crisis that has fueled the growth in the country’s economy.

He pointed out that population growth was the powerhouse behind the increase in the deployment of workers abroad and the dollars generated by these workers fueled the country’s consumption-led economic growth.

"I am often asked what’s the secret behind the growth in our consumption and I tell them we produce a lot of babies," Neri said. "When those babies grow up, they will spend money and that spending will continue fueling our growth."

Neri even went as far as saying that the slowdown in the population of most developed economies is an untapped opportunity for the Philippines.

"Rich countries have populations that are growing older and older because they are not reproducing as fast as we are. And guess who’s going to fill up that slack," Neri said.

With the country’s total population now at roughly 80 million, the per capita income has been frozen at $900 per year, one of the lowest in the world despite modest economic growth. This means that economic development is not translating into better lives for the general population because of inequity and the sheer number of people that have to share the economic pie.

The most recent estimates indicated that by 2005, the country’s population would increase to P84.2 million, growing by an average annual rate of over two percent.

The Population Commission said that if the country continues to grow at this pace together with its 1999 per capita gross national product (GNP) growth rate of 1.4 percent, the per capita GNP is expected to double only after 49 years. This means that standards of living would improve only very slowly over a period of at least two generations.

As of last year, the Philippines was the 14th most populous among 243 countries, according to the recent report of The World

Gazetteer, the world’s most extensive population database. The report estimated that by 2004, the Philippines could beat Vietnam and Germany for 12th place.

The World Gazetteer said that with the world population at 6.267 billion, this means 13 in a thousand people all over the world are Filipinos.

Among the 243 countries, China (1.307 billion) and India (1.047 billion) remained as the only "billionaires," followed by the United States (288.212 million), Indonesia (217.73M), Brazil (176.27M), Pakistan (149.277M), Nigeria (146.675M), Russia (142.881M), Bangladesh (136.433M) and Japan (127.46M).

In 11th place is Mexico (100.124M), followed closely by Germany (81.947M), Vietnam (80.305M), and the Philippines.

In terms of growth rate, however, it was estimated that the Philippines had the third highest among the 20 most populous countries, overtaken only by Pakistan and Nigeria whose population growth rate was pegged at 2.6 percent.

The country’s fertility rate was also high at 3.7 percent compared to the rest of Asia and contraceptive prevalence rate was estimated at 47 percent.