Top 10 economic news stories of 2023

Merry Christmas, dear readers. This piece is toast to the great economic performance of the Philippines despite an unwieldy and worsening global economic environment.

For the purposes of brevity, we are covering only three important indicators — GDP growth, the unemployment rate, and the inflation rate. Countries covered in this analysis are those that the IMF projects as having GDP size at purchasing power parity (PPP) values for 2023 of at least $700 billion. These are also the top 40 largest economies in the world. Two countries among the top 40, Pakistan and Bangladesh, have no quarterly GDP growth data, so are not included.

These are the top 10 economic stories and trends based on these indicators and data.

1. India, Iran, the Philippines, China, and Indonesia (all Asian countries) are the top five fastest growing major economies in the world in 2023. Their growth ranged between 5.1% to 7.2% in the first three quarters (Q1-Q3) of the year. India and the Philippines are interesting because their growth has been high this year on an already high base last year.

2. Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, and Thailand have had modest growth of 2% to 4.3% this year. The slowest growing Asian nations are South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan with growth of only 0.1% to 1.1%.

3. Turkey, Russia, and Spain are the fastest growing major economies of Europe, with 2.6% to 4.6% this year. But Russia’s growth is due to having contracted in 2022, thus is coming from a low base. Other Europeans are either crawling at 0.3% to 0.9% growth (France, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK) or are outright contracting (Germany, Sweden, Poland, and Ireland).

4. In the Americas, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, the US, and Canada have had modest growth of 1% to 3.5%. Argentina is the worst performing major economy of South America.

5. Of the five fastest major economies in the world, the Philippines has the lowest unemployment rate. It was only 4.2% in October 2023, versus 7.1% and 7.9% for India and Iran. So, the Philippines has the real job-creating fast growth, followed by China and Indonesia. Vietnam and Malaysia have low unemployment but modest growth.

6. Turkey, Spain, France, Italy and Sweden have high unemployment rates of 7% and up. The only Europeans with unemployment rates below 4% are Switzerland and the Netherlands.

7. Inflation in the Philippines was at a “medium” level of 6.2% in the first 11 months of 2023, similar to the inflation rates in Italy and Germany. Most Asian nations have had inflation below 6%, with China bordering at deflation with 0.3%.

8. Other countries have had horribly high inflation rates of 24% to 52% (Nigeria, Egypt, Iran, and Turkey), and Argentina is a real outlier with 120% inflation. If the Philippines had this level of inflation, there could be military coups or other serious political instability.

9. Looking at the experience of Europe, degrowth and deindustrialization walk hand in hand with “decarbonization” in energy and economic policies. Meanwhile, the modest to high growth in Asia are consistent with their continued “carbonization” and high-level consumption of fossil fuels.

10. From the above three indicators, the Philippines seems to have been the best performing major economy in the world in 2023. It has had high growth, low unemployment, and modest inflation.

I give my congratulations to the Philippines’ entrepreneurs and workers, and the government economic team for securing economic and business stability in the country. In particular, Budget Secretary Amenah F. Pangandaman noted that “fiscal responsibility and procurement reforms have helped in raising overall economic productivity of our people.” And with the signing by the President of the General Appropriations Act (GAA) on Dec. 20, she said that the GAA is “our battleplan in fighting poverty, in protecting our homes and securing our border, in keeping our people healthy, creating jobs, and funding livelihoods.”

The Philippine economy has taken the good path. We are hoping for continued and even stronger growth and more job creation in 2024 and beyond. A happy and prosperous new year to us all.

Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. is the president of Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. Research Consultancy Services, and Minimal Government Thinkers. He is an international fellow of the Tholos Foundation.

minimalgovernment@gmail.com