GOVERNMENT spending, particularly on infrastructure, has been the focus of a considerable amount of debate in the past several weeks. This is partly due to the attention attracted by the country’s hosting of the 30th Southeast Asian Games and because of the recent congressional debates over the 2020 national budget.
Infrastructure spending has been a key part of the Duterte administration’s economic strategy for the past three years, and has been sold to the public as an effective way to accelerate and spread economic growth. A recent report by Oxford Economics, however, suggests that the value of government spending to the broader economy might not be as great as believed, and in some cases might even be a drag on growth.