The Department of Finance (DOF) unveiled the government's first-ever medium-term fiscal framework (MTFF) aimed at reducing the deficit, promoting fiscal sustainability, and enabling robust economic growth.
Finance Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno said the economic team has submitted the MTFF to President Marcos, which will be implemented in two stages over the entire term of the administration.
"This framework will set the tone or will be our game plan for the next six years. This is the first time that this government or any government of the Philippines has presented such a game plan," said Diokno, who heads the Marcos administration’s economic team.
Diokno said the MTFF contains near-term and medium-term strategic plans for socioeconomic development, which will be presented in detail to the public by President Marcos in his first State-of-the- Nation Address (SONA).
Among the targets set under the framework is for the economy to expand by 6.5 percent to 7.5 percent in 2022, which economists project to be the highest growth rate among the ASEAN+3 countries, which include Japan, South Korea, and China.
Diokno said economic growth is targeted at 6.5 percent to 8.0 percent from 2023 to 2028.
The MTFF demonstrates the government's holistic approach in accelerating economic growth and promoting the welfare of Filipinos, he said.
The MTFF will also serve as the government's guidebook in reducing poverty incidence and lowering the country's debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio.
"We are not only concerned with growth per se, but we are also concerned with reducing poverty. So, our target is that by the end of President Marcos’ term, poverty incidence will be down to a single digit – nine percent," Diokno said.
The MTFF's overall goal is to create more quality jobs and reduce poverty incidence by steering the economy back to its high-growth path in the near term and sustain the high—but inclusive and resilient—growth, over the medium term.
Diokno said the Duterte administration was able to bring poverty incidence down from 23.5 percent in 2015 to 16.7 percent before the pandemic hit.
Between the first semester of 2018 and the first semester of 2021, poverty incidence rose to 23.7 percent. The new administration targets to bring the rate lower to nine percent of the population.
The Marcos administration also aims to elevate the country to upper middle-income status, where per capita income for Filipinos is at $4,046, by the end of the President's term, Diokno said.
The finance chief is confident that government revenues will continue to pick up and the deficit will decrease in the near term.
"The desire is to reduce the deficit which ballooned during the pandemic to around nine percent deficit-to-GDP ratio, to around three percent," the secretary said.
Moreover, the government aims to cut the debt-to-GDP ratio from the current 63.5 percent as of the first quarter of 2022 to 60 percent by 2025.
Boosting agriculture, reviving mining, and increasing infrastructure spending
Diokno said President Marcos wants all industries to perform well.