Angelo Taningco
Economist, Treasury Group
The yield curve of Philippine government securities (GS) has steepened last year—with the yield spread between the 10-year and 2-year rising by 95 basis points (bps) due to a sharper increase in the longer-end compared to the shorter-end of the curve; this change in the slope of the curve is the steepest since 2009. We conjecture that such phenomenon may have been partly a result of market expectations that future economic growth will become stronger on the back of more aggressive fiscal stimulus measures.
The government’s real GDP growth target range starting this year until 2022 is 7.0% – 8.0%, which is higher than last year’s 6.5% – 7.5%. A key driver for the expected GDP growth acceleration is the government’s expansionary fiscal policy, which hinges on the individual tax cuts under the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) and the ‘Build, Build, Build” program that aims to fast track public infrastructure spending.
Current literature documents the slope of the yield curve as a reliable predictor of future economic activity. These studies have shown that yield curve steepening (flattening) precedes an economic expansion (slowdown/recession). This positive relationship between the slope of the yield curve and future changes in economic activity has indeed been witnessed in the United States (US), which has experienced a persistent flattening in its Treasury yield curve, stoking market concerns that it is signaling an upcoming economic slowdown or recession if left unabated.
We provide empirical evidence on the relation between the slope of the yield curve and future economic growth in the Philippine setting. First, we establish a positive correlation between the contemporaneous year-on-year (yoy) real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate and the 10yr-2yr GS yield spread lagged by four quarters, with the coefficient pegged at 0.36. Second, we regress the contemporaneous yoy real GDP growth rate on the 10yr-2yr GS yield spread lagged by four quarters, and found a high statistically significant relation between the two variables; the coefficient of the 10yr-2yr GS yield spread is 0.90, suggesting that a 1 percentage point steepening of the GS yield curve would predict a 0.9 percentage point acceleration in next year’s GDP growth.
Of course, there needs to be some caution in interpreting the regression results since our model has a relatively small sample size (39 observations) and doesn’t include other potential determinants of GDP growth. (Note that adding more independent or ‘control’ variables into the model and not being able to increase the sample size will weaken the model’s precision or statistical power.) Nevertheless, we posit that this piece of evidence provides direction on the economic growth implications of yield curve steepening in the Philippine market.
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