Country’s growth not a fabricated story: Coloma

MANILA – The Philippines’ growth story is real and is not a crafted story, a Palace official said earlier this week.

“World Bank, International Monetary Fund, (and) Asian Development Bank) and advanced economies (G-7) as well as international rating agencies that can attest to the faster growth of the domestic economy and (they) are confident on the effectivenesses of how the economy is managed,” Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr said.

Coloma issued the statement in response to request for reaction on former Chief Justice Reynato Puno’s statement that says more people still suffer poverty amidst the government’s declaration about the continued expansion of the domestic economy.

Puno said positive reports on the domestic economy are being made up by political spin doctors ahead of the 2016 polls.

However, Coloma decried this, citing that the strong growth of the domestic economy in the last few years has been noted by both the first world countries, multilaterals and credit rating agencies.

For one, major debt raters have elevated the country’s credit rating from junk status to investment grade levels.

This happened in 2013 when Fitch Ratings, Standard & Poor’s (S&P), and Moody’s Investors Service, among others, gave the country its initial investment grade ratings due to combination of factors that include strong external payments position, strong domestic growth, improvement in fiscal situation and resilient banking sector among others.

The following year, both S&P and Fitch upped by a notch their ratings on the country.

In recent years, the domestic economy has been posting strong and resilient growth with an average of about six percent, higher than in the past. pna