Budget and Taxes

Growth forecasts vs actual growth, and agriculture performance February 6, 2024 | 12:02 am My Cup of Liberty By Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. https://www.bworldonline.com/opinion/2024/02/06/573630/growth-forecasts-vs-actual-growth-and-agriculture-performance/ Among the important reports published in  BusinessWorld  is the quarterly poll of economists and analysts on their GDP growth forecast, reported few days before the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) releases the official GDP data. This is on top of the monthly poll of the same group of economists and analysts for the monthly inflation rate forecasts. I checked the infographics and reports on the quarterly GDP growth forecast polls for all four quarters of 2023 and came up with an analysis. The forecasters are the chief economists of banks and consulting firms or one of the faculty members of academe. They are from banks, consulting and finance firms, and the academe. The organizations were: Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), Ban

Philippines has third-fastest growth among world’s top 40 largest economies February 1, 2024 | 12:02 am My Cup of Liberty By Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. https://www.bworldonline.com/opinion/2024/02/01/572545/philippines-has-third-fastest-growth-among-worlds-top-40-largest-economies/ THE PHILIPPINE Statistics Authority (PSA) released the fourth quarter (Q4) 2023 GDP data yesterday — it showed that GDP grew by 5.6%. Full year 2023 growth was also 5.6% — good. For this column, I monitored the growth of the top 40 largest economies in the world, those with GDPs of at least $700 billion in purchasing power parity (PPP) values in 2022. Two of the countries had no quarterly GDP data: Bangladesh and Pakistan. One country had data for Q1 and Q2 2023 only (for an average of 3.8%), the United Arab Emirates (UAE). So these three countries are not included among the 37 countries listed in Table 1. I grouped the countries into three. Those in Group A have full 2023 data with growth of 2.5% and above. T

My Economic Forecast for 2024 – 6.5% January 25, 2024 | 12:02 am My Cup Of Liberty By Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. https://www.bworldonline.com/opinion/2024/01/25/571009/my-economic-forecast-for-2024-6-5/ In this column’s piece “Economic Forecast 2024” (Nov. 21, 2023), I presented a table showing the 2024 GDP growth forecast for the Philippines by the IMF’s World Economic Outlook (October 2023) which was 6.2%, the ADB’s Asian Development Outlook (September 2023) which was 6.2%, and Trading Economics (November 2023) which was 6.4%.  Recently, the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO) projected that the Philippines’ GDP growth this year would be 6.3%. See  BusinessWorld’s  story “PHL to grow fastest in the region this year — AMRO” (Jan. 19, 2024). For the latest in my “Economic Forecast 2024” series (the second part came out on Nov. 24, 2023), I have produced my own forecast for the 4th quarter (Q4) of 2023 — hence full year 2023 — then my predictions for 2024. For the sake of brevity

Revenue challenges faced by new Finance chief January 16, 2024 | 12:02 am My Cup Of Liberty By Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. https://www.bworldonline.com/opinion/2024/01/16/569000/revenue-challenges-faced-by-new-finance-chief/ HONG KONG — As my family’s belated vacation here is ending, I see that Hong Kong as a tourist and investment hub is back to where it was in 2019, or even better. The big crowds at Central, Tsim Shia Tsui, Mong Kok and other areas in Kowloon, the huge volume of passengers inside long trains, the huge construction projects at the airport, these are among the reasons why I say this. Hong Kong’s extensive infrastructure — its smooth wide roads, its huge suspension bridges, tunnels, and flyovers, its subway train-walkway-shop complexes, its large modern airport, its huge, long seaports, its brightly lit roads and streets, etc. — they were all built with little public borrowing. Until 2019, its public debt to GDP ratio was only 0.3%. This went up to 4.2% in 2022 and is proj