Central Luzon posts 5.3% growth rate in 2015

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga – The economy of Central Luzon posted a 5.3% growth rate in 2015, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported. PSA Regional Director Edgardo Pare said the gross regional domestic product (GRDP) of Central Luzon was recorded at P704.28-B in 2015, which is approximately P35-B more than the region’s economic output in 2014 at P669-B. GRDP measures the economic performance of a region in terms of goods and services produced. It measures the relative contribution of the 3 major economic industries namely Agriculture, Hunting, Forestry, and Fishing (AHFF), Industry, and Services. Despite the increase in the GRDP’s nominal value, Pare noted that such increase is still lower than the 9.3% growth rate in 2014, primarily brought about by the slowdown in industry and AHFF. “Industry decelerated from 16% in 2014 to 6.7% in 2015, while AHFF plunged to 0.6% in 2015 from 6% in 2014,” he said. Manufacturing, which accounted for the biggest share in the industry sector decelerated from 15.9% to 6.7%. Mining and quarrying further declined from -8.7% to -39.2 %. Similarly, electricity, gas and water supply slowed down from 19.1% to 7.0%. “The good news though is that construction in our region is booming as shown in its acceleration from 6% to 11.1%,” Pare explained. In terms of the AHFF, agriculture and forestry decelerated from 6.8% to 0.8%, while fishing declined from 2.1% to -0.6%. Under the services sector, financial intermediation and public administration and defense; compulsory social security also decelerated from 11.8% to 5.7%, and from 4.2% to 1.3%. “Nonetheless, this decline is mitigated by the acceleration in other services, which contributed to the over-all up-tick of the whole industry from 4.1 to 5.7%,” he cited. In particular, Transportation, Storage and Communication expanded from 4.7 to 7.6%; Trade from 1.3 to 4.4%; and Real Estate, Renting and Business Activities from 3.8 to 6.7%. In addition, other services also redounded from -0.1 to 4.9% in 2015. For his part, NEDA Regional Director Severino Santos said that overall, Central Luzon continues to perform well, especially in terms of tourism and that the regional economy remains promising./CLJD/MJLS-PIA 3