THE National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) said the speed of vaccinations and the distribution of vaccines in areas with high Covid-19 numbers would help the economy recover faster.
Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick T. Chua told reporters in a briefing on Tuesday that Neda intends to propose to target areas with high Covid-19 cases for vaccination to boost economic growth.
By inoculating more Filipinos in these areas, Chua said consumers will have greater confidence to spend. Consumption is a key economic driver of the Philippine economy.
âIt depends on the speed of vaccination and where we target [such as] in areas of highest risk areas of high Covid cases. That is what we are going to propose so we achieve an earlier opening of the economy,â Chua said.
Chua said other factors that will help hasten the recovery include the decision of the government to allow greater mobility under the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) and Modified ECQ (MECQ) it imposed in March.
He said this is better than last yearâs decision to close down 70 percent of the economy. The decision plunged the Philippines in a deep recession which was particularly felt in the second quarter when GDP fell 16.9 percent, the worst since the second World War.
Chua also said the government has employed digital tools to improve contact tracing. He admitted that this was one of the weaknesses in the governmentâs pandemic response last year.
Meanwhile, Chua said that while sporadic lockdowns are still to be expected, these will be well-targeted and focused only on specific areas in order to prevent hurting the economy.
âWith the vaccination accelerated, we do not see the need for a big area lockdown or quarantine so we will proceed under that direction,â Chua said.
Chua recalled that in the first quarter performance briefing, Neda estimated that posting a 6-percent growth, the low-end of the target, would require the economy to grow an average of 10 percent in the next three quarters.
Last week, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reported that GDP contracted 4.2 percent in the first quarter of the year, marking the economyâs fifth consecutive quarter of decline.
Data showed the performance economy in the January to March period was an improvement from the contraction of 8.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020.
However, the first quarter GDP growth was worse than the 0.7-percent contraction recorded in the same period last year.
The contraction this year is the worst recorded first quarter performance since 1985 when the economy contracted 10.5 percent in the January to March period.