THE country’s socioeconomic planning chief sees ‘a bit of a slowdown’ in the economy in the third quarter of 2025 due to supply shocks such as typhoons and work suspensions.
‘There may be a bit of a slowdown because of the supply shocks that we have seen. There are so many typhoons that we have seen during the quarter, many days of work suspension, so economic activity is really affected,’ Department of Economy, Planning and Development (DEPDev) Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan told reporters on the sidelines of the EU-Philippines Business Dialogue on Thursday night in Makati City.
Balisacan noted that the slowdown in gross domestic product (GDP) growth is in relation to what the economic team was expecting six months ago. Still, he is hoping that the economy’s growth rate in the third quarter will not be slower than the 5.4 percent posted in the second quarter.
On the other hand, the DEPDev chief is pinning his hopes on what he called ‘good developments’ such as: ‘Inflation has continued to fall, interest rates have continued to slow down.’
He explained that the effects of falling interest rates in the earlier months are ‘beginning to be felt now,’ adding, ‘There are usually lag effects of interest rate changes and investment and consumption decisions.’
The growth that the country’s economic team is expecting for this year is now at 5.5 to 6.5 percent.
‘The low end of the range is still very much achievable,’ Balisacan said.
Maintaining his optimism, however, the country’s Socioeconomic planning chief said there may be no need to revise the economic team’s growth target. He pointed out, ‘Even the numbers of IMF, World Bank, ADB, are so close to the 5.5. So why do we have to be more pessimistic than what they are seeing for the country?’
With this, Balisacan said the government should ‘check on what we can speed up, because obviously if there is a slowdown in government spending, we have to do something about that.’
Next week, he said, the economic team will meet to ‘discuss the way forward.’
Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) noted that the economy grew 5.5 percent in the second quarter of 2025. This placed the country’s growth at 5.4 percent in the first six months of the year.
This growth was faster than the 5.38-percent GDP growth posted in the first semester, but slower than the 6.5 percent posted in the second quarter of 2024.
Balisacan hopes there will be ‘greater clarity and less uncertainty’ in the coming years.
At present, Balisacan said the main source of uncertainty is still the tariffs that are being imposed by the United States.