Philippines - Country Analysis

Philippines

* Region: East Asia & Pacific * Income category: Lower middle income | * Population: 94,852,030 (2012) * GNI per capita (US$): 2,210 |

Business Environment/Climate

Globally, The Philippines is ranked 136 out of 183 countries in Doing Business 2012, recording a decline of 2 points compared to last year. This decline reflecting lower scores for seven indicators. The largest decrease occurred in the Getting Credit indicator, where the country dropped 10 spots. Its Climate change and disaster risks are issues critical to sustainable development and national security issue. The Philippine government will not change the provision in its Constitution which forbids foreigners from owning more than 40 percent share of any local company, but promised to continue to improve the business climate.

Quality of Labour & Labour Productivity Index

With a population of nearly 100 million and growing at 2%, the Philippine economy needs to create many more jobs, as well as better quality jobs, than it has been doing. The size of the labor force as of July 2010 was 39 million, out of an estimated 61 million population aged 15 years and over. Of this total, some 36 million persons were employed. The unemployment rate stood at 6.9 percent, representing 2.7 million persons, and the underemployment rate was 17.9 percent, representing 6.5 million persons.

*Laborers and unskilled workers remained to be the largest occupational group during the past decade, recorded at more than one-fourth of total in 2001 to around one-third in 2010. Farmers, forestry workers and fishermen, still was the second largest group although its share has slipped down to less than 20% because of employment shedding in the agricultural sector.

*Unemployment rates had little changes from 2005-2010. Following a small decline between 2006 and 2007 (-0.7 percentage point), unemployment rates in 2008 (7.4%) and 2009 (7.5%) rose marginally (7.4% in 2010)....