Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26154170-20160107120412

I just wondered one day if whether the Philippines was a poverty-stricken, underdeveloped country now, but then I checked and heard of some analysts considering it as a semi-developed country, outpacing its developing counterparts but its per-capita income not high enough to achieve developed status. I also heard of the growing industrial sector, now roughly a third of the country's gross domestic product, and its status as a newly industrialising country (similar to China, Mexico or Indonesia). Now, instead of shaming the country, I have taken this into consideration and eventually got some factors on what made it considered a semi-developed country:
 * 1) High literacy rate (96.3%, higher than most South American countries and other developing countries) paving way for skilled labour
 * 2) Low inflation (1.1%) which is characteristic of most developed economies
 * 3) Consumption-led growth (instead of the export-led growth pattern found in other emerging economies) which is common in advanced economies with the exception of South Korea, Japan and many East Asian countries
 * 4) Industrialised already, halfway through the modernisation process with its secondary sector making up 31.39% of its GDP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Philippine_provinces_by_Human_Development_Index

(>0.8 = very high, >0.7 = high, >0.55 = medium, <0.55 = low).

I just took a look at this link, and it is obvious that the Philippines has a wide income and development disparity. It seems that some provinces have very low human development indexes comparable to South Asian or African countries. Meanwhile we have 9 provinces and a region scoring at least a high human development index, with its most developed province having a score comparable to Germany. Now this is seven years ago (data was taken in 2009), and I believe that today the individual scores will be much higher. Anyways, its gini coefficient is quite high, and I eventually stumbled on the fact that there is a wide income disparity between not only regions, but socio-economic groups.

So what do you think for the future? I personally consider that it'll graduate into developed status by the mid-twenty first century, and one major bank, HSBC, projected that it'll be the largest economy in ASEAN, and that it'll have a 5-fold increase in per capita incomes, from around $3,000 to $15,000. This is in constant prices and does not account inflation or the power purchasing power. Assuming that prices are twice as low, the per capita income (PPP) will be approaching $30,000. 