We bring you our thirty-first volume of the PIDS Development Research News which has an enhanced design and layout. In this first issue for 2013, PIDS President Josef T. Yap has again collaborated with Senior Research Fellow Adoracion M. Navarro in analyzing the country’s economic performance in 2012 and its prospects for 2013 amid changing conditions in the regional and global economies.  This PIDS tradition of welcoming the new year with an expert’s forecast of the economy based on macroeconomic trends and developments of the previous year started in 1998.

Despite the global economic slowdown, the Philippines achieved an impressive full-year growth of 6.6 percent in 2012, the highest growth rate in the ASEAN region. Once again, the Philippines is being hailed as one of Asia’s tiger economies, a title we have already heard some 20 years ago but which we eventually lost in subsequent years  when we failed to catch up with our Asian neighbors.  However, as the authors have pointed out, the lack of inclusiveness of economic growth in the Philippines remains to be a critical issue. Despite gains in previous years, poverty incidence in the Philippines is still relatively high. The phenomenon of jobless growth persists. Click here for the full article.

Interested to read the analyses of the country’s economic performance and prospects in previous years? Simply click the links below for issues in the last five years or go to the PIDS publications homepage and click Development Research News on the left panel. Use the drop-down button on the right panel to select the year of your choice. 

• The Philippine Economy in 2011 and Prospects for 2012
• The Philippine Economy in 2010 and Prospects for 2011
• The Philippine Economy in 2009 and Prospects for 2010
• The Philippine Economy in 2008 and Prospects for 2009
• What’s in Store for the Philippine Economy in 2008