The government should not extend the modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) if it wants the economy to recover, Presidential Adviser on Entrepreneurship Joey Concepcion said on Monday.

“If it goes beyond two weeks, it becomes a little bit more serious,” he said during an interview over CNN Philippines.

Concepcion explained there is a need “to sustain our economy because in the end, the government also needs the tax revenues both from the national and local level.”

“Remember, if jobs and liverhood are lost, other problems will arise. Poverty will get worse, people will not be able to buy food and medicine,” he warned.

He believes the best approach for the government is to have granular lockdowns by imposing quarantines on selected barangays with high cases of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

“Moving forward, to co-exist with the virus, we have to allow a granularized type of lockdown,” said Concepcion.

He pointed out this was supposed to have been done prior to the President’s decision to heed the call of the medical community and declare MECQ over Metro Manila and nearby provinces including Laguna, Cavite, Rizal and Bulacan.

“That was already the plan to really focus on the barangays,” he said.

Concepcion added that entrepreneurs were expected to start recovering this August.

He said the two weeks under the MECQ should be used “to make sure that the quarantine facilities are scaled up, and the testing continues to be scaled up.”

Concepcion reminded the health community that the government’s job of “balancing health and the economy is really challenging.”

“We respect their (health community) efforts and they’re all admirable. But in the end, we all have to work as one team,” he said.