|
WASHINGTON, D.C.—There is no mistaking that inflation
pressures remain in much of the countries within the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Wednesday.
But such
is the magnitude of their collective easing that it
should be time for central banks in the region—the
Philippines included—to begin looking out more for
impediments to growth than on price pressures, IMF
deputy director for research Charles Collyns said at a
briefing.
“Certainly, inflation has been an issue within Asean.
Across the economies, central banks have been in a
tightening mood in recent months. But these pressures
are now receding and the risks are increasingly moving
to the downside on outlook,” Collyns said.
Because
inflation and growth are peas on opposite sites of the
same pod, Collyns said regulators, such as the Bangko
Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), for example, “will need to
watch the situation very carefully and to balance these
two risks.”
“The
inflation risks are still there, although moderating,
and the output risk, that is moderating,” he said.
Down the
line this could possibly mean an opportunity for the BSP
and counterparts elsewhere in Asean to relax their grip
on current monetary-policy settings and shift
monetary-policy emphasis on growth once more.
“If
things continue to deteriorate on the global outlook,
then there would indeed be a developing case for cuts in
interest rates within Asean as elsewhere,” Collyns said.
As
recently as August, inflation in the Philippines stood
at a 17-year high of 12.5 percent, forcing economic
managers to drastically recast their expectations on
growth this year and the next.
But
because inflation proved intractable long before it
peaked in August, the economic managers have to recast
their growth expectations not once or twice, but three
times this year so far.
From
last year’s heady domestic output averaging 7.2 percent,
the gross domestic product this year was originally seen
to average from 6.7 percent up to 7 percent, only to
lower it later starting from a low of 5.7 percent up to
6.5 percent.
More
recently, Tetangco had to agree with former senator and
current Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ralph Recto,
also the National Economic and Development Authority
director-general, that growth this year should range
only between 4.5 and 5 percent after all.
Collyns
had said the growth slowdown means that inflation
pressures were likely to recede. |
