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Economic Change for the Better: A Responsible Stance
By Speaker Manny Villar
Investors Meeting with Chase Manhattan, Feb. 11, 2000, 3:30 p.m., Pasay Room A&B, Makati Shangri-La
To the organizers of this conference, Chase Manhattan, guests, friends, ladies and gentlemen:
Thank you for inviting me to this forum. A forum like this is the perfect opportunity for us to make our sales pitch before institutional investors. Asia has rebounded and we in the Philippines will join that steamroller, not perhaps in a spectacular fashion, but slowly and surely, and coming almost from ground zero.
Strong Growth
We posted a respectable 3.2% Gross National Product (GNP) growth last year coming from almost flat the previous year. This figure, of course, includes remittances from our overseas contract workers. But even we look at our Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which measures our internal production, the growth rate at 3.2 % is quite good, even beyond the expectations of many economists.
These figures you may even consider very good as in 1998 we barely had a flat growth rate in GNP and negative in GDP. The growth last year was also broad-based. The last quarter, especially, saw accelerated growth on all fronts. Services, manufacturing, mining, utilities and agriculture made a huge jump at yearend. On the demand side, there was faster expansion in exports, imports, personal consumption and government consumption. Surely, these are good signs, unmistakable signs that we are on the road to recovery. This is even more remarkable since private corporations were going through debt work-outs and industrial restructuring.
Our economic fundamentals are strong. We expect solid growth this year at 3-4%. It may not be as spectacular as the double-digit growth of South Korea or the 5-6% growth rates of the other Southeast Asian countries, but we are coming on strong nonetheless. The Philippines will continue to pursue its growth path along an economic policy based on sustained, careful, calibrated, and responsible liberalization, deregulation and privatization.
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