Gov’t set to revise upward export goal

FILE:
Finance Undersecretary Gil Beltran on Thursday cited the robust growth of exports in recent months. (Pixabay photo)

MANILA —The inter-agency Development Budget Coordinating Committee (DBCC) is expected to announce on Friday an upward revision in the government’s exports goal.

Finance Undersecretary Gil Beltran on Thursday cited the robust growth of exports in recent months.

“Export growth should be higher,” he said.

Current DBCC export target is a growth of five percent for 2017, seven percent for 2018 and nine percent for 2019.

These figures were hiked last June from two percent, five percent and seven percent for 2017-19, respectively.

Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) show that exports grew by 6.6 percent last October, slower than the 9.7 percent a year ago but already higher than the target for this year.

Beltran said updated figures would be presented during the DBCC meeting on Friday.

“(Targets) will be announced later depending on the (economic managers’) decision but all are improvements over the previous,” he said.

DBCC is chaired by the Secretary of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM)  while other members include officials of the Department of Finance (DOF), the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), the Office of the President (OP) and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).

Aside from the upward revision of the exports target, the economic managers, during their meeting last June revised the peso-US dollar assumption for 2018-22 to 48-51 from 48-50 due to the expected impact of interest rate normalization in the US.

Meanwhile, the Committee maintained the 6.5-7.5 percent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) target for this year and the seven to eight percent target for 2018-22 as well as the 3.2 to four percent inflation target for 2017 -22; the Dubai crude oil price assumptions of USD40-55 per barrel for 2017, USD45-60 per barrel for 2018, and the USD50-65 per barrel for 2019-22.

Also kept are the assumption on the rate of the 364-day Treasury bill (T-bill) at 2.5 percent to four percent , the 48-50 peso-US dollar assumption for 2017, and the imports growth target of 10 percent from 2017-19 and 11 percent from 2020-22. (PNA)