World Bank: Job reforms to drive Philippines growth to near 7%

Reforms to enhance job creation and quality could propel Philippine economic growth to close to 7% and transform it into a middle-class economy by 2040, the World Bank said.

“To stay on a path to upper middle-income status and to realize the national ambition of a middle-class society free of poverty by 2040, the country needs a new wave of reforms. Faster, broader, deeper,” World Bank Country Director for the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei Zafer Mustafaoğlu said.

In its maiden launch of the Country Growth and Jobs Report for the Philippines on Tuesday, the World Bank said that it is “feasible” for economic growth to accelerate to 6.8% by 2040, along with ramping up employment and wages.

“The implementation of the set of reforms recommended in this report is estimated to increase annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth to 6.8%, create over 5.1 million additional jobs, and boost real wages by 12.9% by 2040,” according to the report.

World Bank models show the Philippines growing by an additional 1.4 percentage points (ppts) if its recommended reforms are implemented.

Broken down, economic growth could increase by 0.78 ppt annually through reforms aimed at productivity and human capital; by 0.45 ppt through deeper capital reforms; and by 0.18 ppt by boosting labor force participation.

The report has about 45 actionable recommendations, with the reforms focused on those three main pillars.

The World Bank said reforms are needed to boost project infrastructure investment, especially in connectivity.

“In an archipelagic economy like the Philippines that has spent so much in connectivity infrastructure, keeping restrictions to inter-island transport, the form of cable path restrictions, is sort of a big distortion, a big cost,” World Bank lead economist for Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand Gonzalo J. Varela said.

“Lifting restrictions to inter-island shipping, domestic shipping, is something that is also going to help the economy grow, and a lot of the growth happens at local levels.”

The multilateral institution also recommended policies to lower entry barriers for businesses; open domestic shipping to lower inter-island transport costs; and strengthen service delivery by local government units.

“Ensuring that local governments have the capacity to deliver the key services that they are mandated to deliver is also going to be crucial,” Mr. Varela added.

To further mobilize private capital, there is also a need to support small and medium enterprises and multinational companies linkages and deepen capital markets.

“The Philippines has received more foreign direct investment in the last few years, and we are yet to see that small and medium enterprises are connecting to these multinationals, that they are gaining from that connection as suppliers, gaining productivity,” he said.

Faster growth

With these reforms implemented, growth can further accelerate. “What it does is it brings that baseline that we had estimated at 5.4%, closer to that Philippine Development Plan target,” Mr. Varela said.

“It means that if these reforms are implemented by 2040, the Philippine economy would be 24% larger than it would have been otherwise,” he added.

The government is targeting 5.5-6.5% GDP growth this year and 6-7% from 2026 to 2028, according to latest Development Budget Coordination Committee  estimates.

Under the Philippine Development Plan, the government had placed an upper bound of 8% on economic growth targets until 2028.

“To achieve its goal of becoming a middle-class society, the Philippines needs to sustain annual growth of 6-10% for decades,” the World Bank said.

It noted that though job quality remains a concern despite an increase in the number of jobs.

“Despite impressive gains, productivity growth remains weak. Job creation has tilted heavily toward non-tradable sectors, while the tradable economy — so critical for long-term growth and innovation, is shrinking,” Mr. Mustafaoğlu said.

“Top firms are not expanding fast enough. Competition is limited and too many workers remain in low-quality, low-wage jobs.”

The latest data from the local statistics agency showed the Philippines’ unemployment rate went down to 3.9% in May from 4.1% in April, with the number of individuals in the labor force hitting an all-time high of 52.32 million.

“The middle-class society by 2040 national ambition is not a utopia. It is something that is achievable if there is a commitment, both from the public sector to double down on reforms, and from the private sector to innovate and compete,” Mr. Varela said.

Based on the World Bank’s latest income classification, the Philippines still remains a lower middle-income economy, narrowly missing the threshold to achieve upper middle-income status.

The Philippines posted a record gross national income per capita of USD 4,470, only USD 26 shy of the World Bank’s upper middle-income threshold of USD 4,496-USD 13,935.

Artificial intelligence

Meanwhile, the World Bank also flagged the impact of disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).

“Some jobs in the Philippines are at risk of technology displacement. AI exposure and AI’s potential complementarity can affect employment. The Philippines has slightly fewer jobs comprising routine tasks than its peers,” according to the report.

“However, the Philippines is more exposed to AI’s displacement effect than other East Asia and the Pacific countries due to its higher engagement in cognitive services sectors, such as contact centers in the IT-BPO sector.”

Mr. Varela said these technologies are “fast moving” and so far, they have yet to see displacement in the implementation of AI.

“At the moment, that is not yet happening. The sector is looking at it very carefully, but neither in the Philippines nor in other countries that have a large share of the economy and productivity, we see that these are at the moment being displaced.”

“What AI will do is it will create new jobs, similar to what we saw with other technological changes that created some new jobs and displaced others.”

Mr. Varela said it will be crucial to have labor market institutions that facilitate the movement of people across sectors and activities.

“It’s also having the skills to do that. So, there’s an agenda on skilling and upskilling workers… science, technology, engineering, mathematics, are also going to be increasingly important with AI.”

Mr. Mustafaoğlu said that there is a “very good opportunity” for the Philippines to benefit from the shift to AI.

“It has a young population, and things are happening a lot in the case of Asia and the East Asia region. If we can take that opportunity to actually benefit from this new development of AI and integrate AI and technologies in a way that firms increase their capability… and the economy continues to benefit and grow.”

“That will also attract FDI (foreign direct investment), because when you have those capabilities, foreign firms will also come and invest here with new technologies,” he added. — Luisa Maria Jacinta C. Jocson