Business sees the economic situation would remain tough until the second quarter of 2023, as the country faces its greatest headwinds: the Ukraine-Russia crisis and the United States’ aggressive increases in interest rates.
Joey Concepcion, Go Negosyo founder and president and chief executive officer of RFM Corp., said the country should bear this out until the situation gets better by the second part of next year.
“All of these headwinds … will be the strongest headwinds that our country will face. And we just have to be prepared to withstand it. Energy costs, electricity costs have gone up. There’s some problems in that sector. We have to ride it and I think hopefully by next year, there will be greater clarity, on the conflict in Ukraine and Russia and hopefully America starts to trim down the interest rates by the second quarter of next year. We just have to ride through this turbulence and hopefully by the second part of the next year, things will be much better,” Concepcion told ANC yesterday
Concepcion said manufacturers like his company are feeling the high cost of raw materials brought by the Ukraine-Russian war.
Concepcion said the peso will depreciate even more if the Philippines does not keep pace with the aggressive stance of the US on interest rates to tame inflation.
“That will continue until the first quarter, second quarter of next year. Hopefully it’s not pushed too much, because then you can have some kind of a recession coming from America and spilling over here,” he added.
Concepcion said it would be particularly tough this Christmas.
“The next three months will be telling. This is when MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) …when most businesses really do recover a lot….We have to really continue to grow our economy because we have a huge debt …we should continue to open up the economy, especially tourism,” Concepcion said. – Irma Isip
