THE Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) declared the Cordillera as one of the fastest developing regions after its economy grew by 12.1 percent from P137 billion in 2016 to P153 billion in 2017.
"Our economy grew the highest among all the 17 regions in the country. The last time CAR (Cordillera Autonomous Region) had a double digit growth rate was in year 2000 when the regional economy grew by 10.8 percent," said PSA-Cordillera director Villafe Alibuyog.
The sector had the highest contribution in the region's economy at 52.1 percent with manufacturing as the main driver, followed by services at 39.6 percent and agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing with 8.3 percent.
Moreover, the region per capita index is at 100.5 percent, slightly higher than the national average, an improvement from last year's 95.8 percent. The per capita of the region stood at 83,044 in 2017 and was slightly higher than the national average for each person.
PSA International Cooperation Unit director III Benjamin Navarro added one of the most important report of the statistical system is the gross regional domestic product which is the total GRDP levels divided by population to construe how much each individual contributes to the regional economy, "for 2017 the CAR grew the fastest at 12.1 percent."
Navarro said with the estimate of the value of goods and services of the region, it showed a picture of the region, areas and sectors expanding and needed intervention.
On Thursday, senior development specialist of NEDA-Cordillera Marie Olga Difortorum stated the estimate show that growth was packed by the recovery of the industry in agriculture sectors and the continuous growth in the services sector.
"We note the 18.6 percent growth of the industry rebound by the construction and the more than expected growth in manufacturing this is a tuned with the government increase expending for public infrastructure and social protection programs and increase investments in private construction," Difortorum, who read the message of NEDA – CAR regional director Milagros Rimando.
According to Rimando, the output of the local manufacturing is slowly making an impact on regional manufacturing output.
Based on data obtained from the PSA-Cordillera, industry rebounded from negative growth of 0.3 percent in 2016 to positive 18.6 percent last year brought about by the accelerated growths of manufacturing and construction wherein manufacturing, industry's biggest contributor, posted a robust growth of 19.5 percent last year from only 3.8 percent the previous year while construction turned around from negative 26.4 percent the previous year to positive 23.6 percent last year.
However, electricity, gas and water supply still managed to grow but on a slower pace from 12.6 percent in 2016 to 5.7 percent in 2017 while mining and quarrying was not able to reverse the negative growth of 3.5 percent the previous year and further shrunk by 2.9 percent in 2017.
