MANILA, Philippines — The Duterte administration’s economic team tempered their growth targets for this year and for 2021 until 2022 to reflect recent developments at home and abroad.
At its meeting, the inter-agency Development Budget Coordination Committee, or DBCC, cut its gross domestic product growth assumption for 2019 to 6%-6.5% from 6%-7% previously.
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For 2020, the government still expects the economy to expand 6.5%-7.5%, unchanged from their earlier projection.
But for 2021 until 2022, the DBCC said they are now targeting a GDP growth of 6.5%-7.5%, abandoning their previous goal of 7%-8%.
“This is in light of recent developments, both domestic and external, as well as in preparation for the proposed 2021 National Expenditure Program,” the DBCC said.
The Philippine economy expanded 5.5% in the April-June period, the weakest in 17 quarters after the delayed approval of the 2019 budget left new projects unfunded and disrupted state spending.
But the economy managed to rebound in the third quarter, growing 6.2% during the period. In the first nine months of 2019, GDP growth averaged 5.8%.
In a bid to power growth, the DBCC said it is preparing a P4.6-trillion national budget for 2021, 13.3% or P540 billion higher than the P4.1-trillion outlay for next year and equivalent to 20.2% of GDP.
Meanwhile, the budget deficit cap was maintained at 3.2% of GDP from 2019 to 2022 “to sustain the government’s investments in infrastructure and human capital development.”