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COUNTRY INSIGHTS

​Back on the grey list
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 29 Jun 2021

At the end of its plenary on June 25, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) announced that it is adding the Philippines to its list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring, widely referred to as the “grey list.” The latest list contains 22 countries and includes only two other So...

The passing of Benigno Aquino III
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 24 Jun 2021

Manila woke up today to news of the death of former President Benigno Aquino III who served from 2010 to 2016. An accidental chief executive, he owed his election to his mother, democracy icon Corazon Aquino, who died in August 2009 just as the country was gearing up for election season. For six ...

Takeaways from congressional hearings on recent power outages
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 19 Jun 2021

Ordinarily, rotational brownouts lasting a few hours are par for the course during hot summer months in the Philippines. The heat drives up usage of air conditioners at a time when power generation from hydroelectric plants falls. Puzzlingly though, outages this time around happened while the eco...

​Unemployment back above 8%
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 08 Jun 2021

The just released April round of the Labor Force Survey offers an informative comparison of the employment picture between first, this year’s lockdown vs. last year, and second, job losses during the latest lockdown. The main takeaways:Losses from this year’s smarter lockdown were substantially l...

​May inflation at 4.5%
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 04 Jun 2021

As expected, the headline inflation rate stayed at 4.5% in May, reflecting a 0.1% monthly increase in prices. Food prices fell 0.4% mom due mainly to continuing decline in vegetables, with meat prices likewise retreating marginally. The increase in non-food inflation may be traced to catering ser...

Snakes and ladders
PHILIPPINES · Forecast · 28 May 2021

Tracking the Philippine economy’s progress under the Covid-19 pandemic is like watching a game of Snakes and Ladders. In the board game that originated in India, the race to the diagonal opposite of the board through a series of ladders to win the game can be thwarted by a throw of the die that l...

​Lockdown watch (6)
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 14 May 2021

Metro Manila and 4 nearby provinces (NCR+) will revert to general community quarantine (GCQ) tomorrow, May 15, although “heightened restrictions” will apply. The decision to follow only incremental lifting of restrictions reflects on the one hand, the continued downtrend in covid19 cases over the...

Q1 GDP down by 4.2%
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 11 May 2021

The on the ground feedback we were getting of the economy’s performance leading up to today’s GDP announcement had suggested a more buoyant economy than the reported 4.2% year on year (yoy) contraction. The headline number implies that GDP grew by only 0.3% quarter on quarter, or an annualized ra...

Inflation and pork tariffs
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 06 May 2021

Yesterday’s announcement of a 4.5% headline inflation rate in April, itself unsurprising, appeared to have impelled the executive and legislative departments to come to an agreement on a revised import regime for pork products. The data showed that with the expiry of the 60-day price freeze on po...

​Lockdown watch (5)
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 29 Apr 2021

Last night, President Rodrigo Duterte extended the quarantine status of NCR+ (mECQ) by two weeks to May 15. The decision followed two weeks of improving covid19 statistics that saw active cases falling by half since mid-April to less than 70k, albeit still over 2.5x pre-surge levels in February. ...

​Lockdown watch (4)
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 20 Apr 2021

Can Metro Manila exit the current lockdown? Three weeks since President Rodrigo Duterte placed the nation’s capital and 4 surrounding regions (“NCR+”) under the strictest enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) and more than a week since the transition to its looser form (mECQ), covid19 statistics ar...

​Lockdown watch (3)
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 12 Apr 2021

As expected, President Duterte yesterday put Metro Manila and four surrounding provinces (“NCR+”) under modified enhanced community quarantine (mECQ), a looser form of lockdown compared with the ECQ in place over the past two weeks. In general, mECQ rules allow movement of workers although on-sit...

Pork tariffs lowered
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 08 Apr 2021

President Duterte on Wednesday signed an executive order substantially reducing tariffs on imported pork products for one year. The order immediately lowers tariff rates from 30% to 5% for imports within the quota or minimum access volume (MAV) effective for three months, increasing to 10% in the...

Inflation slows down in March
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 07 Apr 2021

The headline inflation rate eased from 4.7% in February to 4.5% in March, below the median analyst forecast of 4.8%. The disinflation mainly reflects a drop in food prices following normalizing fish and vegetable supplies as well as artificially steady meat prices with the two-month price freeze ...

​Lockdown watch (2)
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 05 Apr 2021

On Black Saturday, President Rodrigo Duterte extended the ECQ status of Metro Manila and surrounding provinces (“NCR+”) by another week to April 11. The decision was not unexpected considering experts’ prognoses that a one-week lockdown would not be enough to control the surge in covid19 infectio...

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