Economic managers of the Marcos administration on Wednesday warned that increasing the country’s daily minimum wage by P150 would slow down economic growth, increase unemployment, and accelerate inflation further.

“Obviously, we understand what the problems are — high cost of energy, poor infra, high cost of business,” he said during the briefing of the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) with the Senate. We’re trying to address those, but what I’m trying to say is that if we (do) address the problem of low incomes by raising the wages by legislative (measures)… then these other factors that are required by investors to come will happen much later,” the NEDA chief added.