The province of Guimaras recorded the highest economic growth rate in Western Visayas last year, data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed.
Based on PSA’s Provincial Product Accounts (PPA) report, th economic growth of Guimaras accelerated to 7.7% in 2021 from -5.1% in 2020.
The latest figure even exceeded the 5.9 percent gross regional domestic product (GRDP) growth of the region.
Guimaras’ gross provincial domestic Product (GPDP) was valued at P14.8 billion last year, higher than 2020’s P13.7 billion.
PSA-Guimaras Chief Statistical Specialist Nelida B. Losare said the services industry contributed 50.6 percent to the economic growth of the province.
Other major contributors were the forestry, and fishing industry with 34.1 percent and construction, mining, and manufacturing industry with 15.3 percent.
“In our results, I always believe that Guimaras is good and recovering, the numbers shown to us are promising, especially that 7.7 percent,” said Guimaras Governor JC Rahman A. Nava.
“It is unfortunate that it was conducted at the time of the pandemic, and nadugangan sang Ukraine war, so there are factors that also affected the statistics, yet, we can see how resilient we are with these factors, so I think we can still do better,” he further said.
Meanwhile, Negros Occidental had the second-highest economic growth rate, with 7.1%.
Antique came in third with a growth rate of 7.0%, followed by Iloilo City, 6.8%; Capiz, 6.2%; Bacolod City, 4.9%; Iloilo province, 4.5%; and Aklan, 3.4%.IMT
