THE Philippine economy will recover faster than projections in 2021 if vaccines against COVID-19 will be available, the World Bank said Tuesday.
In its latest Philippine Economic Update, the Washington-based multilateral lender said the economy will likely experience a deeper contraction of 8.1 percent this year due to “multiple shocks” such as the COVID-19 health crisis, economic activities across the country frozen by quarantine measures, devastating typhoons in November, and the global recession.
But the Philippine economy is expected to rebound gradually by 5.9 percent and 6.0 percent in 2021 and 2022, “driven by the return to more robust economic activities assuming the infection curve flattens domestically.”
World Bank senior economist Rong Qian, however, said the gross domestic product (GDP) projections next year did not factor in the timeline of the availability of vaccines.
“There is a lot of uncertainty on the timing, effectiveness, implementation, so we didn’t factor in when the vaccine will be rolled out in the Philippines,” Qian said.
“If it’s rolled out next year it will constitute an upside risk to the baseline projection, which means that the recovery will be faster than our projections,” she noted.
The World Bank’s projections this year and next year are in line with the economic managers’ revised macroeconomic assumptions of 8.5 percent to 9.5 percent contraction this year.
The economic team also expects that Philippine GDP will bounce back to five percent to 7.5 percent in 2021 and eight percent to 10 percent in 2022. (GMA News)
