Econ team might raise gov’t targets thru 2028
The interagency Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) is eyeing to revise the government’s targets upward through 2028 next month, Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman told reporters on Friday.
“When we do our DBCC [meeting], we look at the short and medium term and long term. So I think we scheduled it already sometime, this November,” Pangandaman said on the sidelines of a Chamber of Thrift Banks meeting.
Last week, the budget chief also said that the DBCC is considering an upward revision of the target growth rate for gross domestic product (GDP) this year in light of the slower-than-expected inflation rate in September.
The inflation rate across the country slowed to 1.9 percent in September, marking the lowest rate in more than four years, driven by a slower rise in prices of food, transport, housing and utilities like water and electricity.
The readout was better than the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ forecast range of 2 to 2.8 percent for the month.
Pangandaman added that the economic managers are also looking forward in reviewing the Marcos administration’s Medium Term Fiscal Framework (MTFF) – the government’s roadmap of its economic objectives,
“There’s a provision in our MTFF that we should review it. So by 2025, there is a provision that we need to review the MTFF. So I think everything we do is consistent,” Pangandaman added.
She noted that the review of the framework and government targets meeting will be done simultaneously next month.
The budget chief said that the economic team will meet again in January next year before submitting the resolution of the MTFF to the Congress.
The Philippine economy expanded by 6.3 percent in the second quarter, outpacing its regional peers with Indonesia’s 5.05 percent, China’s 4.7 percent and Malaysia’s 5.8 percent. It only fell behind Vietnam’s 6.9 percent.
