With only a month remaining this year, National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Secretary Arsenio Balisacan is still optimistic on achieving the lower end of the government’s full year growth target.
“I’ve not given up the lower number,” Balisacan said during the Economic and Financial Literacy Training for the Media held in Ortigas last Saturday.
Balisacan, on the sidelines of the event co-organized with the Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines, said the government is retaining its macroeconomic assumptions for now.
However, it will also depend on the upcoming inflation data.
The NEDA chief said the Development Budget Coordination Committee will have a meeting again after the next inflation report.
The Philippine Statistics Authority is set to report on the November inflation on December 5.
“We’ll see how the inflation looks like,” Balisacan said.
The average growth rate of the Philippine economy for the first nine months of the year is 5.5 percent, which falls below the administration’s growth assumption of six to seven percent for the entire year of 2023.
To achieve the lower end of the target range of six percent, the economy needs to grow this quarter by at least 7.2 percent.
