Cordillera logs 4.4% economic growth in 2025

BAGUIO CITY – The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) in the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) reported that it posted a 4.4 percent economic growth in 2025 driven by the main sectors which include services sector, industry, agriculture, forestry and fishery (AFF).
“Services accounted for 70 percent, industry with 22.6 percent and agriculture, forestry and fishery at 7.4 percent of the region’s total PHP394.96 billion gross domestic product,” Villafe Alibuyog, regional director of the PSA-CAR said during the dissemination forum on Thursday.
She said that AFF expanded significantly from 1.3 percentage points in 2024 to 4.3 percentage points this year.
“The highest growth rate recorded since 2018 in the AFF sector,” she said.
Industry recorded a 1.7 percent growth in 2025 which is modest compared to the 0.2 percent growth last year.
Services, which is the region’s biggest industry continued to grow at 5.3 percent slower than the 6.9 percent in 2024.
Of the region’s total GDP, Services account to PHP276.51 billion, Industry with PHP89.09 billion and AFF with PHP29.36 billion
She said the fastest growth was observed in human health and social work activities, education as well as professional and business services.
“CAR’s economic growth was mainly driven by wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles followed by manufacturing and education,” the director further said.
The region’s exports also grew by 30 percent in 2025 making it the fastest growing expenditure item in the region followed by government consumption at 7.5 percent and household final consumption expenditure at 4.2 percent.
The report also shows that on average, a person spends at least PHP148,641 on final consumption of goods and services, including purchases of consumer goods and services, barter transactions, goods and services received in kind and goods and services produced and consumed by the same individual.
“The per capita HFCE (Household Final Consumption Expenditure) of CAR rose by 3.0 percent from PHP144,256 in 2024,” she added.
Agri interventions
Susan Balanza, Department of Agriculture – CAR’s planning officer, in the same forum, said the government’s interventions to the different stakeholders of agriculture is contributing to the growth of the AFF sector.
She also cited government programs aimed at boosting production and the income of those in the sector aside from provisions for technologically advanced strategies and equipment that allows value adding of agricultural products.
Amid the state of national energy emergency, Balanza said that aside from DA providing interventions and support to the farmers to enable them to bring their products to the buyers, the private sector is also helping in the initiative to prevent losses on the part of the farmers. **Liza Agoot