Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said the government’s ambitious ‘Build, Build, Build’ program will generate an impressive multiplier effect in the form of more jobs and investments that will lift economic growth to around 7 percent over the medium term.
Dominguez said in a statement Monday a sizable portion of the Duterte administration’s unprecedented infra spending would go the country’ poorest provinces to open up investment opportunities and rev up the economies of these areas.
He said to enable the government to pursue the infra program while maintaining fiscal discipline, the Duterte administration endorsed the congressional approval of the Comprehensive Tax Reform Program that aimed to improve tax administration and guarantee a steady revenue flow to support high and inclusive growth.
“We are building an economy that the next generation of Filipinos deserves. It is an economy that cares for the environment, an economy that will allow our people’s many talents to blossom. I invite you to be part of this great enterprise,” Dominguez said at a briefing on the Philippine economy organized by the Standard Chartered Bank at the Mandarin Oriental in Singapore.
“We are looking to sustain a growth rate in the vicinity of 7 percent well into the medium term. That effort will be driven in part by an ambitious infrastructure modernization program which we call ‘Build, Build, Build.’ This program will have an impressive multiplier effect on the domestic economy. It will create jobs, draw investments and improve efficiency throughout the archipelago,” Dominguez said.
Dominguez said the Philippines’ economic strategy took advantage of the country’s benign debt conditions, low interest rates, investment-grade credit ratings and improvements in the ease of doing
business that the Duterte administration would continue to enhance by streamlining government operations and cutting red tape.
He said that over the remaining five and a half years of the Duterte administration, it programmed over $170 billion in infrastructure spending, of which $23 billion would go to the infra program next year.
“A significant portion of the programmed funds will be drawn from official development assistance lending which, on the average, carries interest charges a full percentage point below the best the market offers,” Dominguez said.
“A good portion of the infrastructure spending will go to the poorest provinces. They will open up numerous investment opportunities. I urge all of you to examine these. I look forward to many partnerships and joint ventures as we guide our economic growth towards inclusiveness and sustainability,” he said.
Dominguez said that from 2010 to 2016, the national government debt as a percentage of GDP declined from 52.4 percent to 42.2 percent, which was lower than the Asean average of 46 percent and the emerging markets’ average of 47 percent.
Government revenues allotted to servicing interest payments, meanwhile, declined from 24.4 percent in 2010 to 13.8 percent this year, he said.