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COUNTRY INSIGHTS

GDP Surprise
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 16 Nov 2017

3Q17 GDP raced past analysts’ expectations, growing 6.9% vs. the median 6.5% forecast. Credit goes to net exports which contributed 1.2ppt to GDP growth as export growth (17%) outpaced import growth (14%). In contrast to robust export performance, growth rates of domestic private demand, particul...

Losing sheen
PHILIPPINES · Forecast · 10 Nov 2017

Economic outlooks appear to have turned less rosy these days.All eyes are on the tax reform package in congress and the question in many people’s minds is how the economic team will decide potentially hard policy choices should congress pass a tax bill that yields inadequate revenues. This, toget...

Tax reform: down to the wire? (2)
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 29 Sep 2017

In the first installment on this subject last week, we noted the wide gap between the finance department’s tax reform proposal, originally estimated to yield P157 billion in incremental revenues in the first full year of implementation, and Senate bill 1592 drafted by the ways and means committee...

Tax reform: down to the wire?
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 21 Sep 2017

The Senate ways and means committee submitted last night its version of the tax reform package, authored by 14 of 22 active senators. We gather that Senate bill 1592 is very different from both the DoF proposal and the lower house's version, in terms of both the included policy changes as well as...

Getting to know you?
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 23 Aug 2017

Over the course of 10 trading days in recent weeks, the peso lost P1.30 against the US dollar depreciating from P50.19/$ to P51.49/$ on August 22, its weakest so far. Analysts have been scratching their heads not so much over the direction of movement (which most had expected in light of weaker e...

2Q17 GDP growth: As expected
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 17 Aug 2017

Government announced today that the domestic economy grew 6.5% in 2Q17, behind China’s 6.9% growth clip but ahead of Vietnam’s (6.2%) and Indonesia’s (5%). As forecasted in our past quarterly reports, private consumption and investments continued to slow but growth rates were generally solid, wit...

Same Old Same Old
PHILIPPINES · Forecast · 15 Aug 2017

The President’s second State of the Nation Address (SONA) in July suggests that year 2 of the Duterte Administration will be much like year 1. Our central growth scenario of 6.5% in 2017 and 6.3% in 2018 is unchanged from our last report, although we now expect greater contribution from exports ...

State of the Nation Address, Year 2 (2)
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 25 Jul 2017

As it turned out, somewhere in the middle of the President's two-hour speech, in between a lengthy denunciation of communist insurgents and his demand that America returned the historic Balangiga church bells taken in 1901 during the Philippine American war, President Rodrigo Duterte mentioned th...

State of the Nation Address, Year 2
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 24 Jul 2017

The President's speech today leaves little doubt that package 1 of the comprehensive tax reform proposal, which the lower house approved in late May, will also hurdle Senate review. With Senators squirming in their seats, the President stressed that he wants passage "in full", presumably referrin...

The Great Infrastructure Debate
PHILIPPINES · Report · 14 Jul 2017

Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping famously said, “It doesn't matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice.”It is tempting to apply this to the raging debate about whether infrastructure projects should be pursued through public-private partnerships (PPP) or official development a...

Will there be peace?
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 22 Jun 2017

It has been one month since President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law in Mindanao following what he said was an act of rebellion by a group of Muslim extremists that had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS). Fighting between government forces and the extremists has been intense but...

No change in policy rate expected
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 16 Jun 2017

How likely is it that the BSP will raise interest rates when the Monetary Board meets on Thursday, June 22? The question has come up following the US Fed’s decision to hike its policy rate by 25bp on Wednesday. The move brought the cumulative increase in the US policy rate since December last yea...

Tax reform bill goes to the Senate
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 01 Jun 2017

246 out of 256 congressmen who voted approved the Duterte administration’s proposed Package 1 of tax reform measures yesterday, two days after the President certified the measure as urgent.House Bill No. 5636 or the “Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion Act” will now be transmitted to the Se...

Martial rule
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 24 May 2017

Manila woke up this morning to news that President Rodrigo Duterte has declared martial law in Mindanao, the country’s second largest island group. The declaration followed fighting between government forces and a local terrorist group “Maute” in Marawi City, a small provincial capital in Mindana...

1Q17 GDP at 6.4%
PHILIPPINES · In Brief · 18 May 2017

The headline GDP growth rate itself was unsurprising as far as we are concerned. We already noted in our just released Quarterly Report (“Settling In”) how early indicators pointed to a slower growth rate vs. 1Q16.Markets, on the other hand, were disappointed having expected a number closer to 7%...

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