LOOK at where we are today: 70,764 Filipinos are affected, COVID deaths running to nearly two thousand, five million of our people unemployed, 40 percent of our micro, small and medium enterprises closed and the worst, 5.2 million Filipino families suffered hunger in the past three months.
According to the latest Social Weather Stations survey, about 20.9 percent or an estimated 5.2 million of Filipino families experienced involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the highest hunger rate since September 2014.
It does not help that Secretary Francisco Duque III lacks the credibility to be able to command people to do things.
Recession is about to hit the Philippines, once dubbed as “Asia’s rising tiger”. The next six months would be crucial in setting up the stage for economic recovery. The strategies implemented by the Inter-Agency Task Force, which leads the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, are a dud. The task force has failed to address the worsening health crisis and its impact, including surging unemployment and involuntary hunger.
Yes, the Philippine economy is facing a recession due to the expected contractions of the economy for the first two quarters. The economy contracted by 0.2 percent during the first quarter and the forecast for the second quarter is even worse.
Economists define recession as involving economic contractions for two succeeding quarters. This means that the next six months will be a question of how to survive. They say that to survive in today’s situation is already a success. We must be able to survive so that we can set the stage for economic recovery.
The recent State of the Nation Address would have been an opportunity for the President to lay down his plans towards economic recovery which the IATF failed to do. People would have wanted to hear the President lay out a comprehensive plan that they would be looking for and would be guided by. Not a few were disappointed.
True, there is no immediate solution to this but we have to take the bull by the horn and have proposals that will guide us. The people would like some guidance from the government and they would like to see where we stand and where the government wants us to go.
