Northern Mindanao RP's best performing region in 2008

Northern Mindanao (Region 10) became the fastest growing economy in the country in 2008, outperforming even the National Capital Region and the Philippine economy as a whole, official estimates released by the National Statistical Coordination Board show.

The annual estimates for regional economies which are usually released in July of the following year show Region 10 growing by 5.3 percent in 2009, thanks to the robust performance of the agriculture, fisheries and forestry (AFF) sector.

From 6.3 percent in 2007, AFF accelerated to 10.7 percent in 2008, making up for the slow down of the service and industrial sectors.

"The service sector remains the biggest contributor to the region´s economy at 38.5% but decelerated to 2.3 percent from 8.1% growth in 2007," said Linnito M. Pascual, NSCB-10 regional head. "The industry sector, which accounted for 30.3 percent of the region´s economy, posted a 4.2% growth in 2008, or 4.4 percentage points short of the 8.6% growth recorded in the previous year."

Figures presented by the NSCB Region 10 office at a July 22 press conference in Cagayan de Oro City show Region X grew faster than the national average of 3.8% and outstripped all regions from all over the country in terms of growth.

Although the growth rate was a deceleration from the 7.7 percent growth which made it the country´s third fastest growing regional economy in 2007, it still managed to top all other regions with its 5.3 percent growth in 2009.

On top of this, Northern Mindanao also sustained its status as Mindanao´s biggest regional economy, increasing its share of the island´s economy from 27.9 percent in 2007 to 28.3 percent in 2008. It also accounted for the biggest share of the sectoral pies with 30.6 percent of service, 30.3 percent for industry and 24.5 percent for AFF.

Not the least, Region 10 also sustained its growth in per capita GRDP, growing by 3.2 percent in 2008, although this was a slight decrease from its 5.5 percent growth in 2007.

It also became the only region in Mindanao to record a per capita GRDP rate above the national average, one of only three regional economies to do so in 2008, and ranked third among all regions nationwide.

However, the National Economic Development Authority Region 10 (NEDA-10) expects any growth to be sustained in 2009 to be an uphill battle.

Engr. Clark Clarete, chief economic development specialist of NEDA-10 who represented Dir. Leon Dacanay, Jr. in the conference, said development indicators for the first quarter of 2009 were not encouraging.

"The effects of the global economic crisis are already being manifested in a lot of production indicators," Clarete said. "Investment inflows are down, exports are down as orders for our traditional export leaders declined as validate by the huge drop in energy consumption for the industry sector. This, in turn, affected the shipping industry."

The NSCB estimates the domestic economy grew by only 0.4% in the first quarter. With this performance, the GDP growth forecast for 2009 was revised from a range of 3.1 - 4.1% to just between 0.8-1.8%. Even then, some economic analysts estimate that it´s still possible the Philippines would drift into recession as the global economic downturn has not yet given any signs of bottoming out, he added.

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