Publication: Running Uphill: Growth, Jobs, and the Quest for Productivity. Philippines Growth and Jobs Report
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2025-07-15
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2025-07-15
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Faster growth was driven by pro-investment reforms implemented in a period of high returns to investment and facilitated by public foundational infrastructure investment. Macroeconomic and structural reforms enhanced stability and lowered investment costs. Public investment, increasing from 2.5 to 5.0 percent of GDP on average in the past decade, contributed to providing some of the public goods needed. Given the remaining gaps in investment relative to global standards, these reforms led to high returns to private investment, creating the right conditions to attract more investment from home and abroad, particularly to lagging regions. Spatial convergence became another engine of growth. A more complex external environment and ambitious national targets call for accelerating growth and improving labor outcomes. Potential growth must rise to create more productive jobs. This requires improved connectivity infrastructure, better local governance, and innovation policies to enhance productivity, together with regulatory and trade reforms to optimize resource allocation and tap into the global economy. It also requires stronger skills to prepare for the jobs of the future. In the following six chapters, this report looks at these issues in detail. The first two chapters look at macro and micro features of growth and job creation. They centrally position better labor outcomes as an objective of faster growth. They examine how policies supported or inhibited job creation and growth, and provide long-term growth projections. The subsequent three chapters look at specific development challenges. Chapter 3 looks at spatial growth and job creation dynamics; Chapter 4 looks at technology adoption and productivity dynamics; and Chapter 5 looks at how climate events affect firms’ performance and decisions on investment and jobs.
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“World Bank. 2025. Running Uphill: Growth, Jobs, and the Quest for Productivity. Philippines Growth and Jobs Report. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/43456 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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