Building boom pushes W. Visayas growth

ILOILO CITY—A construction boom in Western Visayas, especially in Iloilo province, boosted the region’s economic growth rate to second fastest in the country last year, according to a government report.

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said Western Visayas posted an 8.3 percent rise in gross regional domestic product (GRDP) in 2015 from 5.2 percent the previous year, putting it behind Bicol among the fastest of 17 regions in the country.

The GRDP is the total goods and services produced in a region in a year and serves as a main economic performance indicator.

Bicol recorded an 8.4 percent GRDP growth, while Davao had 7.9 percent. National GDP growth was 5.9 percent.

The PSA report still included Negros Occidental among the provinces in Western Visayas, said Fred Sollesta, the agency’s director in the region. The newly created Negros Island Region groups it with Negros Oriental.

Construction

Ro-ann Bacal, Western Visayas   director of the National Economic and Development Authority, noted the surge in construction activities in public infrastructure projects, especially roads, ports and seaport, and in the private sector, such as malls, condominium buildings, offices and housing units in subdivisions.

Growth in the sector reached 46.9 percent compared to the previous 14.4 percent.

Sollesta attributed the boom partly to the construction of new houses and relocation sites for survivors of the 2013 Supertyphoon “Yolanda” (international name: Haiyan), which destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of houses in the region.

Slowdown

The significant increase in construction growth rate also powered the performance of the industrial sector from 13.5 percent in 2014 to 22 percent in 2015 and offset the slowdown in mining and quarrying (from 22 percent to 1.9 percent) and manufacturing (from 10.3 percent to 3.4 percent).

Bacal said the pace of growth in Western Visayas was expected to continue this year, especially in construction. But she stressed that more focus should be given on agriculture and manufacturing to ensure sustained economic development.

Agriculture and forestry continued to contract from negative 1.5 percent in 2014 to negative 0.1 in 2015, while fishing decline further from negative 5 percent to negative 3.4.