An official of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) branded as ‘unfair’ the Bloomberg report that highlighted the country as being the ‘worst to be’ in the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
“In the (COVID-19 response) recovery cluster, we talked about that and we feel that the Bloomberg resilience data is practically unfair to our country,” DILG Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya said in an ANC interview.
Malaya said that primarily because the report does not cover all countries “as it just covers just like the top 25 countries in the world on whatever criteria they utilize.’’
Malaya reiterated that the report “to characterize our country’’ as the lowest in the world is unfair “because we are not the lowest in the world, we are just the lowest among the 25 largest countries that was utilized by Bloomberg.’’
He added that the report is not a response assessment to the pandemic but a ‘resilience assessment’.
The DILG spokesperson stressed that including the factors of universal health care and quality of life in the study are yardsticks that western countries have good points and unfavorable to developing countries like the Philippines.
Malaya pointed out that it is an assessment that is unfair if the Philippines is lumped up with the western countries and if not all countries are assessed.
On Oct 27 in a GMA News report, Bloomberg’s COVID Resilience Ranking noted that the Philippines gained the lowest overall resilience score of 40.5.
In June, the country placed 52nd and slipped further to the 53rd spot in Sept. with a resilience score of 40.2.
But Malacañang refuted the country's Sept. ranking claiming that the Bloomberg report did not include all the countries in the world in the survey.
“May 194 countries po sa mundo, 53 lang ang sinurvey. Hindi tayo huli sa buong mundo, huli lang tayo sa mga pinag-aralan (There are 194 countries in the world but only 53 were surveyed.
We are only at the tailend of those that were surveyed),’’ presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said. (Chito A. Chavez)