PBBM rolls out 5-year dev’t plan Signs EO for economic recovery to uplift lives of ordinary Pinoys

By Vito Barcelo and Vince Lopez

PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has signed an executive order (EO) approving and adopting the Philippine Development Plan for the period 2023-2028, which provides a five-year roadmap for the country’s economic recovery and aims to make the Philippines an upper-middle-income country by 2025.

The Plan lists several target outcomes that the Marcos administration commits to achieve over the medium term:

- Bring down the poverty rate to a single-digit level -- 9 percent -- by the time the administration’s term ends in 2028;

- Keep food and overall prices low and stable. Food and overall inflation will be kept within 2 to 4 percent;

- Create more and better-quality jobs. Although unemployment is nearing pre-pandemic levels in 2022 at 5.7 percent, there is much room to improve the quality, productivity, and stability of employment. By 2028, the target unemployment rate is within 4 to 5 percent, and the percentage of wage and salary workers in private establishments to total employed is within 53 to 55 percent;

- Maintain high levels of economic growth in the medium term, rising from 6 to 7 percent in 2023 to 6.5 to 8 percent from 2024 to 2028; and

- Ensure fiscal discipline. The national government deficit to GDP ratio will be gradually brought down from 6.5 percent during the first half of 2022 to 3 percent in 2028. The outstanding government debt to GDP ratio will also be gradually reduced from 63.7 percent in September 2022 to 51.1 percent by the end-2028.