Lower target growth, dismays, alarms business group

THE Federation of Filipino Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Inc. (FFCCCII), the country’s largest and most influential business group, registered its alarm and dismay over the lowering of the country’s economic growth target in the remaining years of the Marcos administration, saying the revision should not represent “the limit of our national economic ambition.”

The group issued the statement even as it also lauded the government for deciding to implement a 14-days visa-free entry policy for Chinese nationals that can help boost the country’s lagging tourism industry and help boost economic growth.

Chinese outbound travel is on track to surpass the pre-pandemic peak of 155 million journeys and projected to exceed 200 million by 2028, Federation President Victor Lim noted.

“This represents a colossal wave of potential affluent visitors—the world’s biggest tourist source market whose consumption patterns are actively reshaping global tourism,” he added.

On the other hand, Lim said the lowering of the country’s economic growth target for 2026 through 2028, the last years of the Marcos administration, is a “wake-up call and a sobering administrative acknowledgment of real headwinds.”

Lim said the government “must target and seek to achieve” an average growth rate of 8 percent in the last years of the Marcos administration as the “minimum viable ambition for a nation of our potential.”

In June 2025, even before the multi-billion flood control project scam drastically eroded public and business confidence in good governance, then Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman, speaking for the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC), announced the reduction of the country’s projected growth for the year from 6.5 percent to 5.5 percent.

The DBCC also pushed down the country’s economic trajectory from between 6 to 7 percent up to 2028.

At a press briefing in Malacañang early this month, Department of Economy, Planning and Development (DepDev) Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, conceded even the revised target for last year has become unattainable, with growth placed at between 4.8 to 5 percent.

For 2026, economic target has been placed at between 5 to 6 percent and 6 to 7 percent until 2028.

While acknowledging that underpinning the reduction of the country’s growth targets is “the corrosive aftermath of the flood control corruption scandal and its dampening effect on confidence as well as global trade uncertainties,” the Federation said government planners “must categorically reject” the notion that these new targets represent “the limit of our national economic ambition.”

Lim said the government “must target and seek to achieve” an average growth rate of 8 percent in the last years of the Marcos administration as the “minimum viable ambition for a nation of our potential.”

“The goal of 8 percent remains the ideal benchmark of transformative progress, because a steadfast and collective drive toward 8 percent is the critical, immediate step that will change our momentum and define this decade,” Lim said.

Look to our neighbors

Lim referred the government to one of the country’s neighbors, Vietnam, which has been ravaged by war.

He noted that in 2025, Vietnam recorded an economic growth of 8 percent and aims to further reach 10 percent this year.

“(Vietnam’s) success in attracting investment, boosting tourism, and raising per capita income underscores a critical truth: global capital and opportunity flow decisively to destinations perceived as dynamic, disciplined, efficient, reformist and relentlessly forward moving,” Lim said.

“The lingering shadow of a massive corruption scandal must be dispelled not by lowered expectations, but by demonstrably higher standards of governance and performance,” he pointed out.