DOF gets ADB grant to hit PH’s 2040 high-income status target
MANILA, Philippines — The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has extended a $225,000 grant to the Department of Finance (DOF) to help steer the Philippine economy to inclusive growth and hit the country’s target of high-income status by 2040.
Documents of the Manila-based multilateral lender on Tuesday (Jan. 11) showed the ADB approved on Dec. 28, 2021 the technical assistance special fund for the support for development of Philippine growth strategy project. Its implementation will be until July 31 of this year.
“The technical assistance will support the Philippines’ DOF formulate a growth strategy that will guide necessary structural reforms to lift potential growth and create skilled jobs,” the ADB said, adding that the health and socioeconomic crises inflicted by the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic had “created many development challenges.”
For one, ADB had estimated the Philippine economy likely incurred P1.9 trillion in losses for each year that schools were closed due to stringent COVID-19 restrictions.
The pandemic-induced economic slump also shed more jobs among women and youth in the Philippines and across the region, the ADB reported last year.
ADB said the DOF was crafting a strategy to “identify new sources of sustained growth that will help the Philippines consistently achieve a real GDP [gross domestic product] growth to become a high-income country in the 2040s.”
ADB identified these potential “drivers of change”: governance and capacity development, knowledge solutions and private sector development.
The grant will also support the following sectors: agriculture, natural resources and rural development; industry and trade; information and communication technology; as well as public sector management.
The Philippines’ long-term vision—dubbed “AmBisyon Natin 2040”—was aimed at tripling Filipinos’ per capita income to $11,000 in 18 years by sustaining at least 6.5-percent annual GDP growth, alongside the implementation of policies that would make it a high-income country in 2040.
Under the AmBisyon Natin 2040 goal, “the Philippines shall be a prosperous, predominantly middle-class society where no one is poor.”
