MANILA – The Philippine peso depreciated against the US dollar on Tuesday, weighed by concerns about the trade war between China and the United States.
The local currency lost 13 centavos as it closed at P52.93:$1 from P52.8:$1 on Monday.
“It depreciated today on market risk-off sentiment after the International Monetary Fund again revised down its global growth outlook for 2019, acknowledging increased risks of a global economic growth slowdown amid the ongoing US-China trade war,” Guian Angelo Dumalagan, market economist at Land Bank of the Philippines, said.
The IMF cut its world economic growth forecasts for this year and 2020, flagging that the failure to resolve trade tensions could dampen global growth.
According to a report by Reuters, the IMF now predicts the global economy to grow at 3.5 percent this year, down by 0.2 percentage points from last October’s forecasts.
“The new forecasts, released on the eve of this week’s gathering of world leaders and business executives in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, show that policymakers may need to come up with plans to deal with an end to years of solid global growth,” the report read. (GMA News)
