Malacañang has expressed optimism that the government will still reach its economic target of 6 to 7 percent growth by the end of 2019, saying the “economic momentum” is on the country’s side now that the budget deadlock has been resolved.
In a statement late Thursday, Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo said President Rodrigo Duterte and his Cabinet “have been thoroughly briefed and apprised” on the deceleration of the country’s gross domestic product, marking a four-year-low 5.6 percent growth in the first quarter.
Meanwhile, an official aid the Senate is equally to blame for the delay in the enactment of the 2019 national budget. The government economic team had said that was the reason for the slowdown in the growth of the gross national product during the first quarter of the year.
Senior Deputy Minority Leader Anthony Bravo said some senators deserved some blame as well since they “took their own sweet time before finally deciding to subject the then-proposed P3.757-trillion General Appropriations Bill to President Rodrigo Duterte’s discretion and exclusive veto power.”
“I myself said that if the budget passage is delayed too much, our GDP would get affected, and I wasn’t wrong,” Bravo told reporters.
The Philippine Statistics Authority attributed the slow growth to the delayed approval of the 2019 government budget.
But Panelo said “the delay in our infrastructure program because of the budget deadlock during the first quarter is now a thing of the past.
“The Palace, therefore, remains confident that we will still reach our full-year 2019 economic target of 6 to 7 percent,” he said, echoing the previous remarks of Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia.
“We expect higher growth in the next few quarters as the ‘Build Build Build’ infrastructure program starts to gather steam.”
Panelo was also hopeful that Manila’s economic growth would improve as the government took measures to “decisively address” inflation.
“The economic momentum is on our side,” Panelo said.
“The future looks bright despite the prophets of doom and the negative forces that try to mislead our countrymen into believing an opposite outlook who, however, refuse to bite.”
The PSA said the latest figure was the slowest growth in the GDP recorded in 16 quarters, or since the economy grew 5.1 percent in the first quarter of 2015. It was also slower than the 6.3-percent expansion in the fourth quarter of 2018.
Pernia said the full-year growth target of 6 percent to 7 percent remained possible if the economy would expand by an average of 6.1 percent over the next three quarters.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III also said the same, expecting the domestic economy to expand at a higher clip for the rest of the year as inflation continued trending towards the official target range of 2 percent to 4 percent.
The supposed deadlock on the proposed 2019 national budget was caused by the quarreling of both chambers of the Congress over the last-minute amendments made by the House of Representatives after the bicameral conference committee approved its version. With Maricel V. Cruz