The Philippine economy has performed well in 2023 amid challenges that the country has experienced, National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) chief Arsenio Balisacan said on Thursday.

In a Palace briefing, Balisacan cited the Philippines as one of the best performing economies among Southeast Asian economies.

“We have done well because if you look at the way, the—we have performed in relation to our many other countries, we have remained among the top performers—economic performers in Asia,” he said.

Balisacan remains optimistic that the Philippines can achieve its six percent growth target for 2023.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the first three quarters of 2023 grew by 5.5 percent. Initially, slow growth was attributed to low consumer and government spending in the first two quarters of the year, but the economy has since caught up.

The NEDA chief assured the government has taken slow government spending as a lesson that would be considered to improve the management of programs for 2024.

“We had hiccups in the government spending in the first half of the year, right? And that really hit us hard by way of growth in the kind of services we’re able to provide for our people,” Balisacan said.

“We have learned our lesson from then [and] we would not want to see that repeated in the coming year,” he added. PND