Moody’s Investors Service remains bullish on the Philippine economy on back of continued reforms in the government and improvements on its fundamentals.

Moody’s Senior Vice President Christian de Guzman said yesterday that, for one, the improvement in revenue collection of the Bureau of Customs is credit positive for the country.

He explained that this development is “something you really can’t ignore.”

”That kind of performance over the past couple of months is credit positive in our point of view when you look at just the long term trend. There has been a deterioration with customs revenue as a share of GDP but the way that it has evolved in the past months with the new commissioner – certainly that is positive not just for tax revenue but for revenue as a whole,” he said.

De Guzman said the additional revenues for the Customs will further increase the government’s fiscal space, which in turn, will enable it to spend for more infrastructure projects.

Revenues of the BOC continue to increase double digit year-on-year with the March 2014 level rising by 34.4 percent to P29.3 billion.

De Guzman said that aside from fiscal reforms, contribution of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ in sustaining domestic growth by ensuring price stability is also a plus factor.

He is positive that these developments will be sustained in the coming years.

Moody’s is the remaining credit rating agency among the three major debt watchers that has not made any ratings actions on the Philippines this year.

To date, Moody’s rates the country ‘Baa3’ with positive outlook. This investment grade rating was given in October 2013 after the debt watcher noted the continued robust growth of the domestic economy.

Last March, Fitch Ratings affirmed its ‘BBB-“ ratings, with ‘stable’ outlook, on the Philippines on continued robust growth of the domestic economy.

Earlier this month, Standard & Poor’shiked by a notch its investment grade rating on the Philippines to ‘BBB’ with stable outlook from ‘BBB-‘, a year after giving it an investment grade rating.

De Guzman said they have not touched their ratings on the country because they are still looking for back-up on their would-be action.*PNA

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