Rise in imports seen to fuel higher Q4 growth

Ahead of today’s announcement of the country’s economic performance for the third quarter, the government Wednesday said second quarter expansion was at a higher 5.8 percent while imports ended the first nine months with a year-on-year increase.

Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan said the upward adjustment in the second quarter GDP figure brought the first half average to 5.4 percent. In August, the National Economic and Development Authority said the economy grew by 5.6 percent in the second quarter, or a first-half figure of 5.3 percent with the 5-percent GDP growth in the first quarter.

“The top three contributors to the upward revision were: other services; trade and repair of motor vehicles, motorcycles, personal and household goods, and construction,” the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said on its website.

To hit the lower end of the “realistic” 2015 GDP growth of 6-6.5 percent, the economy should expand by an average 6.6 percent in the second half. Economic managers had conceded the official target of 7-8 percent growth this year could not be met.

Balisacan said the economy would likely do better in the last quarter.

He said spending for the 2016 presidential elections would be one of the growth drivers in the fourth quarter.

“If you look at the composition of the growth in imports, we have faster increases in capital and intermediate goods—these are good things  for production.”

A preliminary PSA report released Wednesday showed that the value of shipments that entered the country in September rose 6.7 percent to $6.2 billion from $5.9 billion a year ago.

At the end of the first nine months, the total value of imported shipments grew by 2.3 percent to $49.9 billion from $48.8 billion in the same period last year, as imports posted year-on-year increases for four consecutive months since June to reverse the preceding three straight months of decline.

“The 40.7-percent growth in capital goods for September, which is the highest for the year, is an indication of robust economic activity moving forward,” he said.

In September, imports of capital goods “included equipment and materials in which firms invest to expand production and make production more efficient,” went up by over two-fifths year-on-year to $2 billion.

Inbound shipments of intermediate goods and raw materials, which are being used as inputs when producing final goods, meanwhile, rose by a fifth year-on-year to $2.7 billion.

Imported consumer goods also increased by a tenth to $876.8 million in September, on the back of “higher purchases of durable goods, particularly of passenger cars and motorcycles,” Neda said.