‘PH economy likely shrank by 9.7% in 2020’

An HSBC Group unit on Wednesday further trimmed its Philippine economic growth estimate for 2020 as it projected gross domestic product (GDP) to reach the low end of the government’s growth target for this year.

In a virtual briefing, Cheuk Wan Fan, HSBC Private Banking and Wealth Management managing director and chief investment officer for Asia, said the banking giant expected domestic output to have contracted “by 9.7 percent in 2020,” as it was likely to “lag behind [its] Asian peers, particularly North Asian peers like China, which have been doing relatively well in containing the [coronavirus].”