Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua reported on Monday (April 19) night to President Rodrigo Duterte that the foregone wages for the almost five-week implementation of enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) and modified ECQ have reached P83.3 billion.
Chua explained that the amount of wages lost for each week of ECQ is around P19.6 billion, while for every week of MECQ it is P15.7 billion.
The official advised strictly implementing and enforcing the Prevent, Detect, Isolate, Treat, and Reintegrate (PDITR) strategy so that the economy can be reopened to allow more people to work.
Meanwhile, Chua said the country has been able to create 9.3 million jobs, enough to recover the 8.7 million jobs lost between January to April 2020.
“Nadagdagan pa natin ito by 600,000 jobs, at ito ay mahalaga dahil ito ‘yong nagpapatakbo sa ating ekonomiya [We were able to add 600,000 more jobs, which is important because this runs the economy],” he said.
However, the unemployment rate remains high at 8.8%. The NEDA is aiming to lower it to 4% to 5% by 2022.
According to Presidential Adviser on Entrepreneurship Secretary Joey Concepcion, the economy has a great chance of recovering in the fourth quarter of the year in line with the conduct of massive and aggressive vaccination.
The first batch of the 17 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines purchased by the private sector through a tripartite agreement is expected to be delivered in the first week of June. This will also be followed by Novavax and Covaxin from India.
“We have to solve this health situation to be able to solve the economic problem, then we can balance lives and livelihood together, so vaccines to me [are] the only solution,” he said. – Report from Naomi Tiburcio/AG-jlo
