MANILA -- The Philippine economy is on course for its worst annual contraction of the postwar era, due to lengthy coronavirus lockdowns, President Rodrigo Duterte's economic team projected on Thursday.
Gross domestic product is expected to shrink by 8.5% to 9.5% this year, eclipsing the 7.0% annual contraction recorded in 1984, based on data from the Philippine Statistics Authority. That fall over three decades ago occurred near the end of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship, when the Southeast Asian nation plunged into economic and political crises.
