Philippines' jobless rate increases to 4.5 per cent in January

MANILA (Xinhua): The Philippines' unemployment rate increased to 4.5 percent in January from 3.1 percent in December last year, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) has announced.

PSA head Dennis Mapa told a press conference that there were 2.15 million jobless Filipinos in January.

"This was lower than the reported number of unemployed persons in January 2023 of 2.38 million," Mapa said. The jobless rate was 4.8 percent in January 2023.

National Economic and Development Authority Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said the government has sustained its push to attract more job-generating investments by creating an enabling policy and regulatory environment.

Balisacan added that the government will strengthen linkages between industry, academe, and the public sector to address skill mismatches in the labor market.

In another development, the Philippines' gross international reserves (GIR) settled at US$102.7 billion at the end of February from 103.3 billion dollars by January, the Philippine central bank said in a statement.

The slight month-on-month decrease in the GIR level reflected mainly the national government's payments of its foreign currency debt obligations, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said in a press release.

The BSP said the latest GIR level represents a more than adequate external liquidity buffer equivalent to 7.7 months' worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income.

The central bank added that the February GIR level is about six times the country's short-term external debt based on original maturity and 3.9 times based on residual maturity. - Xinhua