The path to Bagong Pilipinas paved by a very encouraging 2023 economic report

THE National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) held its 13th board meeting with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in Malacañang last Friday. NEDA Director General Arsenio Balisacan presented the Philippine Development Report (PDR) 2023, which is like a midterm report card on the country’s medium-term development roadmap, or the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 20232028. The PDR is a result of NEDA’s monitoring of various government agencies’ implementation of programs, projects and policies that will see our country achieve its goals as laid out in the five-year PDP.

In a nutshell, Secretary Balisacan said that the Philippine economy generally performed well in 2023 despite the magnitude of challenges we faced and continue to face internally and externally. It has repeatedly been announced in my weekly Palace press briefings that the Philippine economy was one of the best-performing economies in Asia in 2023. This momentum has to be sustained in order for us to achieve the goals set in the PDP of at least reducing poverty and improving the quality of jobs in the Philippines.

When the numbers were presented, President Marcos responded by saying the 2023 PDR was very encouraging. It is good, but as with any aspiration, it is never good enough.

President Marcos said that the PDR results show that the policy changes and reforms put in place since 2022 have started to take effect. The numbers are going in the right direction. Inflation is still an ongoing threat, not just in the Philippines but in the rest of the world. He stressed the importance of strengthening our agriculture sector, though much of the shocks that impact our agriculture, such as prices of inputs and extreme weather, cannot be controlled internally. We must sustain this momentum in order to achieve our goals, especially since the Philippines is headed in the direction of becoming an uppermiddle-income country by 2025.

In keeping with BBM’s thrust to modernize agriculture and agribusiness, the NEDA board also approved the extension of the Rural Agroenter prise Partnership for Inclusive Development and Growth (Rapid Growth) at the same meeting. At our January 16th press briefing, Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. unveiled the Department of Agriculture’s three-year plan to invest in post-harvest facilities to reduce waste and lower the cost of rice and corn. In keeping with the Marcos Jr. administration’s push for digital transformation, the DA is also utilizing digitalized production data in order to manage the food supply of the country effectively. We will also be seeing more agri-industrial ports and cold storage facilities.

For the year 2024, we aim to achieve a full-year GDP growth rate of 6.5 percent to 7.5 percent. We not only