Philippines got an economic upgrade, yet many Filipinos feel it’s no ‘big deal’

Philippines got an economic upgrade, yet many Filipinos feel it’s no ‘big deal’ The country’s leap to upper-middle-income status means little to inflation-squeezed families struggling with debt and meagre wages “I laughed actually. Like, for real? Where did the data come from?” Ann Michelle Federez-Abato said of the July 1 announcement that her country’s gross national income (GNI) per capita had reached US$4,850 in 2025, surpassing the US$4,636 cut-off for upper-middle-income economies. “Filipinos are already at a huge loss with inflation, coupled with their daily expenses and with many sinking further into debt just to get by,” the public high school teacher said, reflecting on a milestone that took nearly 40 years to reach and does not match the nation’s economic reality. The entire salary of Federez-Abato goes towards her parents’ mortgage, while the Manila resident and her two-year-old daughter subsist on a monthly remittance of 20,000 pesos (US$324) from her husband, who works abroad as a production officer at a factory. Much of the money is spent on bills, utilities, groceries and transport, a situation the 35-year-old described as “not really financially comforting, but more of surviving” in Metro Manila – especially with electricity costs up 10 per cent and national inflation at 6.4 per cent. For Hans Bautista, executive director of Inklusibo, a non-profit research centre advocating for the country’s impoverished sector, the World Bank’s upgrade “should not be considered a big deal” when millions of Filipinos are still struggling with “meagre wages, attacks on livelihoods and inaccessible basic necessities”.