Research group IBON said that the economy is slowing under the Duterte administration and that its first two full years registered the lowest level of job creation among post-Marcos administrations. The group said that these obvious signs of the country’s troubled economy should be enough to make the government reconsider its overly market-driven policies.

Budget secretary Benjamin Diokno recently announced that the Duterte administration had the highest level of economic growth among the post-Marcos administrations.

IBON however pointed out that the economy is actually faltering and the jobs crisis worsening under this administration.  Economic growth has been slowing since the start of the Duterte administration, and is heading to its lowest in three years. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth was 6.7% in 2016, slowed to 6.6% in 2017, and is down to 6.3% in the first three quarters of 2018, said the group.

Meanwhile, average annual job creation for 2017 and 2018 is only 81,000. The number of employed only increased by 162,000 from 41 million in 2016 to 41.2 million in 2018, according to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

The group said that this is glaringly below the annual average job creation under Corazon Aquino in 1987-1992 (810,000), Ramos in 1993-1998 (489,000), Estrada in 1999-2001 (842,000), Arroyo in 2002-2010 (764,000), and Benigno Aquino III in 2011-2016 (827,000) also as reported by the PSA.

IBON said that the Duterte administration should stop its fixation with growth figures because the growth it is hyping is not creating enough employment in the country. It would be better to accept the failure of neoliberal economic policies and instead protect and support domestic agriculture and Filipino industry to stimulate job creation and domestic development. ###