Shifting the alert level system to granular lockdowns and increasing the vaccination program helped the government to safely reopen the economy, resulting in strong growth numbers, a joint statement by the Duterte administration's economic managers said Thursday.

''Our efforts to safely reopen the economy allowed more Filipinos to work and earn their income,'' the economic managers said. In November, the unemployment rate went down to 6.5 percent, lowest since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020.

This followed a report by the Philippine Statistics Authority that the economy grew 7.7 percent in the fourth quarter, resulting in a full-year gross domestic product growth rate of 5.6 percent.

This surpassed the goal set by the Development Budget Coordination Committee's target of 5 to 5.5 percent.

''This growth performance was much faster than most analyst forecasts, making the country's expansion among the highest in the region,'' the economic managers said.

''This sends a strong signal that we are on track to a rapid recovery despite the impact of Typhoon 'Odette','' they added.

''We are optimistic that we will not only recover to the pre-pandemic level in 2022, but to achieve the upper middle-income country status,'' they said.

Although COVID-19 risks rose in January due to the highly transmissible Omicron variant, the government was able to limit severe cases and deaths relative to the total number of cases due to the vaccination program and improvements in the healthcare system. DMS