In its Asia Pacific Economic Preview for the week covering August 8-12, 2022, Moody’s Analytics forecasts the sustained expansion of the Philippine economy at 8.8% in the second quarter of this year.
Moody’s Analytics is a subsidiary of Moody’s Investors Service. Its projected growth of the domestic economy from April to June this year has put the country on track to meet its GDP (gross domestic product) target of 7-9% in 2022.
The subsidiary said private consumption and investment will “buoy second-quarter growth, but higher inflation rising interest rates, and fiscal consolidation will see the economic expansion slow down in the second half of the year.”
Earlier, economic managers have reduced the country’s growth target for this year between 6.5-7.5% based on the perceived impact of domestic and external developments.
Measured by GDP, the domestic economy grew by 8.3% in the first quarter of this year, which sustained its expansion since recovering from its negative output in the second quarter of last year when it rose by 12.1%.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, August 9, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) is scheduled to release its report the country’s 2022 second quarter output.
Economic managers are optimistic household consumption and private investments will back the economy’s continued recovery despite the impact of higher inflation, among others, citing the strong manufacturing sector, the high vaccination rate, improvement in healthcare capacity, and the rise in tourism and employment as among the buoy pushers for this year’s growth.
Their optimism rests primarily on PSA data which show that manufacturing expanded by 10.1% in the first quarter of the year, the second top contributor to domestic growth during that period, behind the 26.5% rise posted by transport and storage.
They also noted that industry sector grew by 10.4% year-on-year in the first quarter of this year, a reversal from its -4.2% growth in the first quarter of 2021.
