BAGUIO CITY – The Cordillera office of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA-CAR) disclosed that the economy of the region increased by 12.1 percent last year from P137 billion in 2016 to P153 billion in 2017 based on constant prices.
PSA-CAR regional director Villafe Alibuyug said the increase in the region’s economy was the highest among all the 17 regions in the country which was triggered by the frog leap from the revised 2.3 percent growth achieved by the region the previous year.
She attributed the significant growth in the region’s economy to the double digit growth of the industry sector, particularly the manufacturing and construction sub-industries wherein industry accounted for half of the region’s total output at 52.1 percent, followed by services at 39.6 percent and agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing at 8.3 percent.
Alibuyog explained the percentage share of industry to the total output of the region increased while the shares of services and AHFF decreased.
Based on data obtained from the PSA-CAR, industry rebounded from negative growth of 0.3 percent in 2016 to positive 18.6 percent last year brought about by the accelerated growths of manufacturing and construction wherein manufacturing, industry’s biggest contributor, posted a robust growth of 19.5 percent last year from only 3.8 percent the previous year while construction turned around from negative 26.4 percent the previous year to positive 23.6 percent last year.
However, electricity, gas and water supply still managed to grow but on a slower pace from 12.6 percent in 2016 to 5.7 percent in 2017 while mining and quarrying was not able to reverse the negative growth of 3.5 percent the previous year and further shrunk by 2.9 percent in 2017.
The PSA-CAR official explained services decelerated to 5.8 percent in 2017 from 7.1 percent in 2016 while transportation, storage and communication recorded the slowest growth with 3.8 percent in 2016 from 6 percent in 2017 followed by other services with 4.6 percent growth in 2017 from 11.1 percent in 2016.
Further, financial intermediation managed to continue the pace with 9 percent in 2017 from 9.1 percent in 2016.
The PSA-CAR noted that RERBA accelerated from 7.4 percent to 8.1 percent, followed by real estate, renting and business activities from 3.1 percent to 5.1 percent, and public administration and defense from 5.2 percent to 5.9 percent and the largest part of the service sector are other services and RERBA with 11.1 and 9.9 percent shares, respectively.
AHFF also improved from e negative growth of 4.5 percent in 2016 to positive 5.1 percent in 2017 which was triggered by the good performance of the agriculture and forestry sub-industries that bounced back from negative 4.8 percent in 2016 to positive 5.2 percent in 2017.
Alibuyog claimed industry contributed the most of the region’s overall growth rate with 9.2 percentage points, services added 2.4 percentage points and AHFF contributed the least with 0.4 percentage points.
By Dexter A. See
