Philippine economic growth in 2024 likely fell below the government's downscaled target as a string of strong typhoons prevented faster expansion, according to Moody's Analytics.
In a Jan. 10 report, Moody's Analytics forecasted the Philippines' gross domestic product (GDP) to have grown by 5.7 percent last year, failing to hit the six- to 6.5-percent goal of the Marcos Jr. administration's economic team.
The government will report on the fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 GDP performance on Jan. 30.
Moody's Analytics nonetheless considers the Philippines to be among the region's "top performers" in terms of GDP growth in 2024, alongside Vietnam's 7.1 percent reported by its government last week, and India's estimated 6.7 percent.
It helps that "price pressures are comfortable" in the Philippines, even as domestic factory output as well as foreign merchandise trade fell in November 2024, Moody's Analytics said.
"Industrial production data for November [2024] captured fallout from typhoons that swept the country late [last] year," Moody's Analytics noted, pointing to the 4.2-percent drop in factory output volume that reversed the 0.7-percent increase last October.
Total production value also slid 3.9 percent year-on-year last November, alongside a 0.8-percent decline in food manufacturing volume, which contributes the most to overall factory output in the country.
"While factory output data in the Philippines tend to be bumpy and subject to major revisions, this latest poor reading is a concern," Moody's Analytics said.
"Six tropical storms from late October through November [2024] brought widespread flooding, which damaged crops. These typhoons arrived after the typical peak season of July through October," it pointed out.
Citing last week's government report, Moody's Analytics blamed the year-on-year decrease in goods exports and imports in November of last year to "electronics manufacturers [not being] able to capitalize on strong demand for advanced semiconductors fully."
Electronics and semiconductor products account for more than half of Philippine exports.
For 2025, the Cabinet-level inter-agency Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) aims for GDP growth of six to eight percent.