Philippines Economy Improving

The downtrend in the unemployment rate in the Philippines signifies the robustness of the local economy driven by private consumption, global financial services firm Nomura said, Business Mirror reported. In a commentary, Nomura Global Economics said the continued decline in unemployment rate reinforced their “solid” gross domestic product growth forecast for the Philippines of 6.3% in 2017. On Tuesday, the Philippine Statistics Authority reported that unemployment rate continued its downtrend at end-October this year to 4.7%, the lowest reading in 10-years. “This bodes well for private consumption and reinforces our solid growth outlook and GDP growth forecast of 6.3% in 2017,” Nomura said. The country’s strong economic growth performance has already generated about 5.2 million jobs in the past six years. As of October, 2016, employment growth in the services and industrial sectors remained strong, rising to 5.6% year-on-year and 12.9%, respectively. Meanwhile, growth in the agricultural sector declined to -1.2% during the period.