The ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO) has kept its growth projection for the Philippines for 2024 and 2025, expecting the economy to be one of the strongest performers in the region.
According to the latest Quarterly Update of the ASEAN+3 Regional Economic Outlook (AREO) released yesterday, the Philippine economy is estimated to have grown 5.8 percent last year, and is projected to grow a further 6.3 percent this year.
Even as AMRO compared these figures with its October AREO report, in which the forecast for the Philippines was 6.1 percent in 2024 and 6.3 percent in 2025, it already mentioned the updated projections in its 2024 Annual Consultation Report on the Philippines published last December.
AMRO’s outlook for 2024 falls below the government’s 6 to 6.5 percent assumption, while the 2025 projection is within the 6 to 8 percent target.
In the ASEAN+3 region, the Philippines has the second highest growth estimate based on AMRO’s report, only next to the projections for Vietnam at 7.1 percent for 2024 and 6.5 percent for 2025.
“You can look at the forecast that we made, we have the Philippines, one of the stronger, faster growing economies in the region. For 2024, we shaved the growth outlook down to 5.8 percent, but that’s because the third quarter was very weak,” Hoe Ee Khor, AMRO Chief Economist, told reporters in a virtual briefing yesterday.
“This year, we kept the growth forecast at 6.3 percent, so that’s among the highest in the region, and that’s partly because the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas has also started to ease monetary policy, and the government has announced that there’s scope for them to continue to ease. So for this year, we expect growth to be much stronger and supported by a stronger improvement in domestic demand,” he added.
According to AMRO, the Philippines’ headline inflation is projected to ease to 3.2 percent in 2024 from six percent in 2023, and will stay at the 3.2 percent level in 2025.
Just last week, major global banking and financial services player HSBC said economies from Southeast Asia will deliver robust gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 4.8 percent in 2025, with the Philippines among the top performers.
HSBC said in its latest report growth by the Asean economies will surpass the 4.4 percent average regional growth of Asia.
James Cheo, HSBC’s chief investment officer for Southeast Asia and India under the bank’s global private banking and wealth segment, said robust domestic consumption and investment will be the main driver of growth among the top six members of the Asean, or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations—Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. No country-specific GDP growth figures among these economies were provided.
In December, several agencies announced their forecasts for the Philippines for 2025: Pantheon Macroeconomics estimated growth of 5.2 percent; World Bank, 6.1 percent; and the Asian Development Bank, 6.2 percent.