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Manila Bulletin devider Business devider GCQ costs Metro workers P21 B a month

GCQ costs Metro workers P21 B a month

Published Dec 31, 2020 06:00 am

The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said the continued general community quarantine (GCQ) in Metro Manila and nearly provinces is costing billions of pesos in foregone wages every month.

In a statement, Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick T. Chua, said that placing the national capital region (NCR) and its adjacent provinces under GCQ costs wage earners around P700 million a day, or P21 billion per month.

(JANSEN ROMERO / MANILA BULLETIN)

Metro Manila, which accounts for about a third of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), has been under GCQ since August, with stricter lockdowns enforced in earlier months as COVID-19 infections rose.

Chua said that wage losses would be greater should these key economic areas will revert back to a more stricter modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ).

According to the NEDA official, MECQ is costing workers in these regions some P63 billion in wages, or P2.1 billion a day.

“These losses and setbacks point to the need to work together to safely reopen the economy further in 2021,” Chua said.

For the past 10-months, the government implemented a series of strict community quarantines to help save lives from COVID-19, while building up the health system capacity.

In three of these 10 months, the stricter ECQ and MECQ have effectively shut down around 75 percent of the economy, resulting in huge losses in jobs and income.

“Based on the second and third quarter GDP numbers, NEDA estimates that every week of ECQ/MECQ in NCR

and its adjacent regions alone shaves off 0.28 percentage points from GDP growth. This is equivalent to around P2.1 billion in lost wages a day,” Chua said.

“The amount during GCQ is lower at around P700 million a day, but this amount is still significant enough to bring hardship to many people,” he added.

When the government restricted the economy in the second quarter, Chua said that the GDP fell by 16.9 percent and the unemployment rate increased to 17.7 percent.

On the other hand, when the government further relaxed the quarantine in the second semester, GDP improved to -11.5 percent in the third quarter and the unemployment rate decreased to 8.7 percent in the fourth quarter.

“The combined effects of these were concretely felt by the people,” Chua said, citing the recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) Survey that showed the hunger rate fell significantly to 15.7 percent in November from a record-high of 30.7 percent last September 2020.

“But we can still do better,” the NEDA chief pointed out.

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