MANILA, Philippines - President Gloria Arroyo will step down next week after overseeing nine years of economic growth, but analysts say the poor masses have missed out and her successor will inherit major problems.

A third of the nation's 92 million people remain in deep poverty, a figure that has barely changed since she took office in 2001, while corruption has flourished and the rich have mainly enjoyed the benefits of the boom, they say.

"The things that really matter to our daily lives like food security, poverty, health and education have really deteriorated over the last six to 10 years," Manila-based economist Arsenio Balisacan told AFP.

Arroyo will leave office on June 30 with the unenviable reputation of being one of the country's most unpopular leaders, but she has repeatedly insisted that her economic record is a source of pride.

"There has been constant growth... for almost a decade under my administration in the face of global crises like international terrorism, high global oil prices and a worldwide recession," she said in a speech this month defending her legacy.

Undoubtedly, economic growth began to rebound after Arroyo took office in 2001, culminating in 7.1-percent gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 2007, the highest annual figure in 30 years.

Even after the global financial crisis broke out in 2008, the country still squeaked by with 3.8-percent growth that year and recorded an expansion of 1.1 in 2009.

Inflation also fell to an annual average of about 5.4 percent under Arroyo compared with 10.4 to six percent under the four previous presidents.

Gross international reserves surged, the stock market climbed and top companies announced record profits under Arroyo.

And as she prepared to bow out, economic growth hit an unexpected high of 7.3 percent in the first quarter of 2010, prompting government planners to raise the year's growth forecast to 5.0-6.0 percent.

University of the Philippines' economist Cayetano Paderanga gave Arroyo a mixed grade, saying she had "some hits, some misses".

He credited her with controlling the runaway budget deficit, largely through the passage of key fiscal reforms in 2005 despite widespread opposition.

But he said much of the growth under Arroyo came from a few sectors -- the remittances from millions of Filipinos overseas and a flow-on boom in consumer spending, plus earnings from call centres and other outsourced businesses.

These sectors are all out of reach of the millions of poor, who have largely missed out on any of the benefits of economic growth, according to Paderanga and Balisacan.

"Economic growth (under Arroyo) made incomes less equal," said Balisacan, head of the Asia-Pacific Policy Centre, a local research group.

The World Bank's country director for the Philippines, Bert Hofman, also said recently that economic growth under Arroyo had not made a serious dent in tackling poverty.

Amid this backdrop, opposition senator Benigno Aquino won last month's presidential elections in a landslide after campaigning on a platform of fighting corruption and addressing the poverty problems.

Aquino complained last week that he would inherit a range of crises from Arroyo, singling out the budget deficit that hit 3.6 percent of GDP last year.

The head of the Employers' Confederation of the Philippines, Edgardo Lacson also said tackling the deficit would be Aquino's most difficult issue.

"The biggest challenge for Aquino will be the deficit -- how to cover it. The second challenge is employment. We have 10 million Filipinos unemployed or marginally employed," he told AFP.

Other problems include making the Philippines as competitive as other Asian nations while bringing down energy prices and ensuring a stable power supply, Lacson said.