Merry Christmas?

It’s said that in some cases, it doesn’t matter whether reality points in one direction, for as long as your feelings point in another. Thus, I hereby present a social media post I saw last week, in which some guy claims that the Philippine economy is now under a recession.

Of course, we aren’t. A recession only happens when a country’s gross domestic product shows negative growth for two consecutive quarters. That happened to the Philippines in 2020, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. That has not happened this year, although our GDP growth has slowed to 2.8% in the first quarter of this year, and then to an even slower 2.3% in the second quarter.

This story was originally published by PortCalls Asia. Read the full story at PortCalls Asia →