A growth slowdown and declining inflation, unemployment

MY CUP OF LIBERTY BIENVENIDO S. OPLAS, JR.

- 

Last week the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) released three important pieces of economic data for 2025 — our low inflation rate of 1.7% for October; a low unemployment rate of 3.8% for September; and modest GDP growth of 4% for the third quarter (Q3) of this year.

So, two pieces of good news, and one rather poor piece of news on growth — it is lower than the 5.5% to 6.5% full-year growth target expected by the government’s economic team, and also lower than the projection of 18 economists polled by BusinessWorld whose median projection was 5.3% for Q3.

Last month, the IMF released an update of the World Economic Outlook (WEO) database. In one table here, I show the GDP size of countries and economies at Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) values. Then their respective growth over the last three years, and my updated quarterly global monitoring of GDP performance.