Mindanao seen growing ‘6-7% in next 5 years’

The Mindanao region is expected to grow in the next five years because of the attention that it is getting from investors, partly because President Rodrigo Duterte hails from the region.

“But if we look at how demand is behaving in terms of the economic growth in [the region], then very likely we tend to agree with the forecast of 6 to 7 percent in Mindanao. Our growth demand actually mirrors the GRDP [gross regional domestic product] growth of Mindanao although our elasticity is somewhere around 1 to 1.5 so that for every 1 percent GRDP increase in Mindanao translates to 1 to 1.5 increase also in the demand. Those are some of the considerations we need to look at,” Romeo Montenegro, investment and public affairs head of Mindanao Development Authority (MinDA), told reporters at the sidelines of a recent business forum in Pasay City (Metro Manila).