President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. said that the Philippines is moving in the right direction while it continues to recover from recent shocks.
Marcos said this after the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported Thursday that the Philippines posted a 7.6 percent full-year growth in 2022, the highest in 46 years since the country recorded an 8.8 percent growth in 1976.
In a video message, the President welcomed this development, saying the Philippines has exceeded expectations.
"We are happy to receive the news that our growth rate for the year 2022 exceeded all expectations, even by the estimates of the international financing institutions, and we are holding it at 7.6 percent," he said.
"We are weathering the shocks from the international economic situation, and we are starting to see that the economy is moving in the correct direction," he added.
However, Marcos said other sectors have yet to enjoy economic growth due to inflation.
"We still have the problem of inflation, which means there is still a problem of certain sectors of society and of the economy, have yet to enjoy the benefits of that growth. That's why inflation is something that we are attending to," he said.
Meanwhile, the President said his administration has been anticipating that the inflation rates, especially for agricultural products, will come down within the end of the Second Quarter.
He was also optimistic that the country's inflation rate would go down to four percent by the third or fourth quarter of this year, as forecasted by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
To achieve this, Marcos stressed his administration's major thrust to attract foreign investments to sustain such growth rate and development.
"We must maintain, however, that growth rate, and that is why it has become so important for us to go out and to attract investment into the Philippines because that is the only way for economic activity to increase and, therefore, to grow the economy," President Marcos said.
"So I think that we are headed in the right direction. We still have some interventions that we will have to apply," he added.
In its report, the PSA said that the Philippine Gross Domestic Product (GDP) posted a growth of 7.2 percent in the Fourth Quarter of 2022, resulting in a 7.6 percent full-year growth.
The PSA said that among the main contributors to the fourth quarter of 2022 growth were wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles, 8.7 percent; financial and insurance activities, 9.8 percent; and manufacturing, 4.2 percent.
Industry and Services posted positive growths among the major economic sectors, with 4.8 percent and 9.8 percent, respectively, according to the PSA.
The industries which contributed the most to the annual growth were:
- Wholesale and retail trade
- Repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles, 8.7 percent
- Manufacturing, 5.0 percent
- Construction, 12.7 percent