Economy up in Central Visayas

CEBU CITY - The economy of Central Visayas accelerated to 8.8% in 2016, higher than the 4.9% recorded growth in 2015 and in the recent presentation of the 2016 Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP), it was learned the continued growth was largely attributed to the upsurge of industry.

The 2016 GRDP was presented by Philippine Statistics Authority 7 Regional Director Ronaldo Taghap simultaneous with the rest of the regions in the country. He said the GRDP is not a study, but a compilation of all data from other government agencies. “GRDP measures the performance of the economy of the region,” he said.

The biggest contributor to the economy is the Services sector with 55.5% share, although this is slower than the 57% share recorded in the previous year. The Industry Sector followed at 39.1% leaving behind Agriculture, Hunting, Forestry and Fishing (AHFF) with 5.4% share.

Manufacturing and Electricity, Gas and Water Supply (EGWS) continued to accelerate by 5.9% and 7.7%, individually. The Mining and Quarrying on the other hand, decelerated to 1% from the growth of 3% in the previous year. Temporarily, services decelerated to 5.9% in 2016 and lower than the 8.7% growth last year.

Taghap also said the deceleration was due to the slowing down of transportation storage and communication with 5.1% in 2016 as compared to the 10.9% in 2015.

Real Estate, Renting and Business Activities maintains its steady pace at 7.1% in 2016. And finally, AHFF suffered reversal in 2016, recording a negative 0.6% as compared to the 2.3% growth in previous year. The reversal was due to the turnaround of agriculture and forestry which pulled down by 1.4 growth percentage.

In contrast, Fishing recovered in 2016 as it grows by 4.4% from a decline of 0.7% in 2015. In the overall 8.8% growth of the region, Industry contributed 5.4% while Services shared 3.4%. AHFF, however, pulled down the growth by 0.04%.