The government hopes the 2010 national elections would be clean and credible to help improve the country’s competitiveness and boost business confidence.

National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) deputy director general Rolando Tungpalan said the business community is more concerned about the credibility of the 2010 national and local elections than the historic automation of the democratic process.

“I think what the investors are looking at would be where there are clean and credible election results there is confidence over the medium -term or the three-year term for local executives and six years for the president,” he said, in a news conference held in the Palace.

“If there is credibility of the outcome of the elections, that’s another factor that will improve the country’s competitiveness,” he added.

Apart from the credibility of the elections, Tungpalan said the government must improve the level and quality of infrastructure as well as regulatory regime to allow for open and competitive business activities.

Asked if the credible polls would help the economy recover faster, Tungpalan said the credible results of the election is a “necessary but not sufficient” condition to growth.

“There are various factors that will contribute to how fast and how high your growth is. But the more important thing is to bring us back in our posting two years ago of a 7.2 GDP,” he said. Although the country is expected to overcome the global financial crisis better than other nations, it will take “some take” to bring the Philippines back to such growth regime, Tungpalan said.

Tungpalan said the economy remains robust due to easing inflation, higher remittances from Filipino overseas workers, and improving quality of employment.

He said the 0.1 percent inflation rate recorded in August will lead to better purchasing power for the public. “If you connect that to the anticipated expansion in personal consumption expenditure, consumers will have more buying more,” he said.

Remittances from Filipino overseas workers also amounted to $1.5 billion in July, up 9.3 percent from last year due to high demand for Filipino manpower and increased access to money transfer facilities.