Time For A New Strategy For Living With Covid-19

COVID-19 is not just a continuing national health emergency. It has also spawned a severe economic recession that has set back the country’s growth trajectory for the second consecutive year.

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On the same day that the Philippine Statistics Authority announced the lowest rate of joblessness since the start of the pandemic, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas also revealed that inflation in August hit the top of its forecast range in August. These mixed results underline the continuing seriousness of the challenges posed by the country’s economic doldrums.

Quarantine exacts a heavy toll on workers and daily wage earners who are first to be unemployed whenever businesses are shuttered. Economic Planning Secretary Karl Chua estimated the economy was likely to lose around ₱105 billion for every week of ECQ, and some 444,000 jobs in August 2021 alone. This is a steep price, especially for an economy that already contracted by 9.5 percent in 2020, and whose 2021 full-year growth forecast has been scaled down considerably.