Top business group paints bleak picture for new year.

The Makati Business Club (MBC) forecasts a bleak business outlook for the Philippines next year, with the domestic economy growing at a rate even lower than what the government expects.

The group, whose membership includes the country's biggest business enterprises, projects the gross domestic product (GDP), or the sum of goods and services produced by the economy, to grow by only 2.7% in 2001, even lower than this year's expected GDP growth rate of only 3.7%.

The economic slowdown in the last quarter of this year is seen pulling down the full-year GDP growth rate, in spite of the 4.2% economic growth reported by the government in the first three quarters of …