THE Philippine economy is in good hands, former president and now House of Representatives Senior Deputy Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo believes.
Arroyo also said the country was on a two-decade period of economic growth before the Covid-19 pandemic struck.
"Before the pandemic, we were in a sustained 20-year period of economic growth that spanned my presidency, that of President [Benigno 'Noynoy'] Aquino [3rd] and that of President [Rodrigo] Duterte," she told The Manila Times.
That two-decade period "saw the reduction of poverty from the level of around 40 percent that I inherited, to only around 16 percent [of the population] before the pandemic," the former president said.
In his keynote message at the 8th Annual Public Policy Conference held by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies on September 13, 2022, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said poverty rose to 18.1 percent in 2021 from 16.7 percent in 2018.
"The unprecedented scale of the health and economic crisis, coupled with policy response challenges, caused such an increase," Balisacan said.
Arroyo is confident that the country "will soon be back on track to address national poverty."
"President [Ferdinand 'Bongbong'] Marcos Jr. has recruited an excellent economic team that many analysts say may very well be the best ever in terms of combined experience and skill. Thus, I am confident that under President Marcos, we will soon be back on track to address national poverty," she said.
"Some are worried about the increased level of national debt. But with prudent fiscal management, we can weather this. During my presidency, I inherited a national debt problem that was even more severe, peaking at 72 percent of GDP. Thus, we implemented fiscal reforms such as e-VAT that paved the way for our sustained growth over the next 20 years."
"During his time, President Duterte set the appropriate tone for our country, peace and order. Now, President Marcos has again set the appropriate tone, national unity. Thus, our economy is in good hands," Arroyo said.
Michael Ricafort, chief economist at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., on September 13 said the country's GDP "could grow by an average of at least" 6.5 percent to 7 percent for 2022, "but with some potential upside surprises, even above 7 percent, in view of the lower base/denominator, as the economy further reopened against some lockdowns in 2021, would be reasonable to expect, after 5.7 percent in 2021."
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Ricafort added, the country's GDP growth was at least 6 percent from 2012 to 2019. That was "among the fastest among relatively larger countries worldwide, partly due to a demographic dividend/demographic sweet spot since 2015, when the majority of the country's population became part of the working age."
"Further reopening of the economy alongside increased/accelerated vaccination toward the important vaccination milestones of population protection and eventually herd immunity in the coming months [given recent and coming accelerated national vaccination programs to achieve these] would fundamentally bode well for the country's economic recovery prospects for the coming quarters/years," he said.
