ECONOMIC growth will likely fall short of official targets for this year and the next, a government-owned think tank said, delaying the Philippines' bid to hit upper middle-income status by 2025.

'[The] outlook on Philippine GDP (gross domestic product) growth remains volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, and disruptive (VUCAD) as indicators remain conditioned on economic policies to be implemented by global powers and how responsive the economy would be,' the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) said in a November discussion paper.