February 3, 2021 | 12:33 am Font Size
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THE National Governmentâs (NG) outstanding debt reached P9.8 trillion at the end of December 2020, pushing the debt-to-GDP ratio to the highest in over a decade, as it borrowed more to fund the pandemic response.
The Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) on Tuesday reported last yearâs debt stock jumped by 26.7% from P7.731 trillion at the end of 2019, due to âhigher funding requirements to respond to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.â
Month on month, the BTr said the debt stock went down by 3.3% from the end-November level of P10.13 trillion after the government settled its outstanding loans to the central bank.
Press Release
Hearing on Constitutional Amendments
Thirty-three years ago, the 1987 Constitution came to fruition; a product of the hard work and dedication of the forty-four men and women comprising the 1986 Constitutional Commission. They drafted a historic document which they deemed as truly reflective of the aspirations and ideals of the Filipino people. 1
We fully respect the Framers of the Constitution. However, with the emergence of modern technology and unknown deadly viruses, it is my submission that we should inquire as to whether the provisions of the 1987 Constitution still reflects the aspirations, ideals and needs of the Filipino people today.
The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly devastated our nation, our public health system, and our economy. The government s economic managers, through the Development Budget Coordination Committee, said that the GDP likely contracted by 8.5% to 9.5% in 2020.2 It also caused a high unemployment rate, with 3.8 million Filipinos still
January 29, 2021 | 12:34 am Advertisement
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Gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 9.5% in 2020, the worst ever in Philippine history. PHILIPPINE STAR/MICHAEL VARCAS
By
Reporter
THE PHILIPPINE ECONOMY suffered its worst annual contraction on record in 2020, even after gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by a slower pace in the fourth quarter, the statistics agency said on Thursday.
Preliminary Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data showed the country’s GDP contracted by 8.3% in the fourth quarter, a reversal of the 6.7% growth in the fourth quarter of 2019. However, this was better than the revised -11.4% in the third quarter and the record -16.9% in the second quarter.
MACROVECTOR / FREEPIK
New techniques of predicting growth have proliferated recently. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), for instance, has added to its suite of forecasting models, “nowcasting” models, to estimate growth as a measure of domestic demand in formulating monetary policy. The results of these quantitative exercises are exclusively for internal use but BSP’s performance has been satisfactory. Its business cycle model, business and consumer expectations surveys, as well as high-frequency data monitoring have also supported its macroeconomic surveillance.
Other central banks have similarly embarked on nowcasting because relying on quarterly economic and financial data with long lags and frequent revisions would serve very little purpose. Nowcasting yields economic estimates in virtually real-time in lieu of the official measures. Many advanced economies have shifted to this methodology following the exponential improvements in computing power. For instance, the R
January 25, 2021 | 7:49 pm Font Size
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THE Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) said it collected P1.67 trillion worth of taxes through electronic payment channels last year, or 86% of the P1.94 trillion total, after the pandemic shut down many face-to-face online payment channels.
Around 21.5 million or 94% of the 22.86 million tax returns filed last year were submitted online, according to the Department of Finance (DoF), citing preliminary data from BIR Commissioner Caesar R. Dulay.
Only 6% or 1.38 million tax returns were filed manually in 2020, with taxpayers also restricted in their mobility by the quarantine.
Taxes collected from the PayMaya mobile application, the latest addition to the BIR’s pool of electronic payment channels, amounted to P4.98 billion.