{"id":254190,"date":"2020-05-07T07:51:15","date_gmt":"2020-05-07T11:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=254190"},"modified":"2020-05-07T07:54:03","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T11:54:03","slug":"flat-to-slightly-negative-movement-seen-for-phs-q1-gdp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/05\/07\/flat-to-slightly-negative-movement-seen-for-phs-q1-gdp\/","title":{"rendered":"Flat to slightly negative movement seen for PH’s Q1 GDP"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Carpo also said that investors are not just looking at opening businesses in major cities but other areas that are starting to rise. (File Photo<\/a>: DerekBBB\/Flickr<\/a>, CC BY-NC 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
MANILA<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Economists of First Metro Investment Corporation (FMIC) and the University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P) forecast a \u201cflat to slightly negative\u201d change in the Philippines\u2019 first quarter 2020 output as a result of the global pandemic.<\/div>\n
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In their joint publication called The Market Call for April, the economists said the pandemic caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) brought governments around the world to unchartered territory.<\/div>\n
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This, after governments implemented various levels of community lockdowns to contain the spread of the virus.<\/div>\n
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These lockdowns, the report said, \u201ccaused high unemployment, large cutbacks in production, income and spending which in turn egged governments to engage in unprecedented deficit spending.\u201d<\/div>\n
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It said producers were also burdened by supply chain disruptions.<\/div>\n
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Malacanang implemented a community quarantine for Metro Manila starting March 15, and an enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) for mainland Luzon beginning March 17 until April 12.<\/div>\n
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The quarantine has been extended from April 12 to May 15, 2020 as Covid-19 cases continue to rise and to give authorities more time to assess the situation after the testing capacity has improved.<\/div>\n
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The report said Luzon accounted for 72.9 percent of the country\u2019s gross domestic product (GPD) in 2018.<\/div>\n
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With the lockdown, the report projects a \u201cflat to slightly negative movement in GDP in Q1 (first quarter) since the lockdown of Metro Manila (and two days later of the entire Luzon) took effect only in the last 16 days of Q1.\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u201cAgricultural and mineral product exports from Mindanao will contribute to this growth,\u201d it said.<\/div>\n
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The government is set to announce the gross domestic product (GDP) figure for the first quarter this year on Thursday.<\/div>\n
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Last year, first quarter growth slowed to 5.6 percent from year-ago\u2019s 6.5 percent because of the impact of the delayed budget approval, which hampered the implementation of several infrastructure projects, among others.<\/div>\n
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The report forecasts inflation not to dip below 2 percent in the second quarter this year, from an average of 2.7 percent in the first quarter, because of supply constraints.<\/div>\n
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It, however, said \u201cneither do we see much upward pressure with weak aggregate demand and ultra-low crude oil prices with supply overhang despite an OPEC-Russia-US production cut agreement in April.\u201d<\/div>\n
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It also discounts any cut in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas\u2019 (BSP) key rates in the remaining months of the first half after the total of 125 basis points slash since the start of the year.<\/div>\n
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The report also forecasts additional 25-basis-point reduction in the key rates in the early part of the second half this year to end the year at 2.5 percent.<\/div>\n
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The BSP\u2019s policy-making Monetary Board (MB) slashed the central bank\u2019s key policy rates in a bid to help lift domestic growth from the impact of the global pandemic.<\/div>\n
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Meanwhile, the report forecasts the government\u2019s budget deficit to account for about 7 to 8 percent of domestic output, higher than the government\u2019s 3.2-percent target, \u201cas tax revenues suffer from lack of production due to the lockdown.\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u201cNevertheless, the government still has the ability to borrow more from both domestic and foreign sources in order to boost its Covid-19 response program,\u201d it said.<\/div>\n
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It projects government spending to rise \u201cwith subsidies and rebooting of infrastructure spending.\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u201cHowever, the debt-to-GDP ratio will rise to a still reasonable level of 46-48 percent from 41.5 percent in 2019,\u201d it added.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA\u00a0\u2013 Economists of First Metro Investment Corporation (FMIC) and the University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P) forecast a \u201cflat …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":242976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","mauthors-joann-villanueva","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254190"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254193,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254190\/revisions\/254193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}