PH GDP needs to hit 6% in 2022 to offset debt
The Philippine GRoss Domestic Product (GDP) needs to grow to around six per cent in 2022 to reduce the national debt incurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
During an interview with Bloomberg, Department of Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said that they are not worried about the repayment of the debt.
“We have to really grow out of the debt. In other words, expand our economy by better than 6 percent per year, over the next five or six years,” he stated.
He added that the volume of pandemic-related debt is understandable given the need to boost financing amidst the drop in revenues because of the lockdowns.
However, the DOF official noted that the “next administration will have to design policies and stick to very strict fiscal discipline to grow out of debt.”
The DOF earlier said it has raised around US$22.55 billion in budgetary support financing and US$3.25 billion in grants and loans financing for projects and programs targeted to address the virus-induced crisis from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the World Bank (WB), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), among others.
