THE Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) has revised downward its GDP growth forecast in the first quarter of the year due to lower estimates for key economic sectors.
In a news statement issued on Wednesday, the PSA said the country’s GDP was slower at 6.6 percent in the January-to-March period, compared to the 6.8 percent it reported in May.
“Major contributors to the downward revision were other services, manufacturing and agriculture and forestry,” the PSA said.
Data obtained by the BusinessMirror from the PSA showed that other services only grew 6.9 percent in the first quarter, a 1.9-percentage-point reduction from the earlier estimate of 8.8 percent.
The PSA said agriculture and forestry, as well as construction also suffered reductions of 0.5 percentage points each to 1.9 percent and 8.8 percent, respectively.
Initially, the PSA estimated that the growth of agriculture and forestry as well as construction reached 2.4 percent and 9.3 percent, respectively.
Data also had manufacturing seeing a 0.4-percentage-point decline in growth estimate to 7.6 percent, from the initial estimate of a growth of 8 percent.
Further, the PSA said estimates for gross national income and net primary income from the rest of the world were revised to 6.3 percent and 5 percent, from 6.4 percent and 4.3 percent, respectively.
“The PSA revises the GDP estimates based on an approved revision policy [PSA Board Resolution No. 1, Series of 2017-053] which is consistent with international standard practices on national accounts revisions,” PSA said.
The PSA is slated to release official GDP growth estimates for the second quarter on Thursday, August 9.
It is the agency tasked to plan, develop, prescribe, disseminate and enforce policies, rules and regulations and coordinate government-wide programs governing the production of official statistics, general-purpose statistics and civil-registration services.
The PSA is responsible for all national censuses and surveys, sectoral statistics, consolidation of selected administrative recording systems and compilation of national accounts.