NEDA confident Philippines can graduate to upper-middle income status by 2022

Despite the economic setbacks faced by the country in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the government is confident that the Philippines will graduate to upper-middle income country status by the end of the Duterte administration in 2022.

“Despite the pandemic, we will still be able to achieve right on target, based on our original plan, the UMIC (upper-middle income country) status,” Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) chief Karl Kendrick Chua said in a virtual briefing on Thursday.

Strict quarantine restrictions which began mid-March 2020, considered the longest in the region, has put the economy on a standstill stripping off an annual income loss of P1.4 trillion or P2.8 billion a day from the economy.

The country’s 2020 gross domestic product (GDP) was dragged to its worst performance on record at -9.5% due to the COVID-19 crisis.

This is its worst full-year contraction since 1998 when the economy shrank by 0.5% due to the Asian Financial Crisis.

Despite the lackluster economic performance, Chua said the country will achieve its development goals of reducing poverty rate by six million Filipinos and graduating to upper-middle income economy status.

The NEDA chief said “we will recover and we will still achieve both our targets.”

“The targets we have set are actually on track,” he said.

The World Bank defines an upper middle-income economy as a country which has gross national income (GNI) per capita of between $3,956 and $12,235.

As of 2019, the Philippines was categorized as a lower middle income country with a GNI per capita of between $1,006 and $3,955.

Meanwhile, the NEDA chief has earlier said that reducing poverty rate to 14% by 2022 is achievable.

“If we work together to address the remaining issues, both COVID and non-COVID issues, then we will be able to achieve 6.5 to 7.5% growth target this year and 8 to 10% growth target next year,” Chua said.—AOL, GMA News