More than three-fourths of the country’s economy remain under heightened restrictions, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said, warning this prolonged-quarantine period will not come without consequences on future generations.

Since the onset of COVID-19 pandemic in March last year, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick T. Chua said that 77 percent of the economy, or gross domestic product (GDP), is still under heightened quarantines.

“Our actions today against COVID-19 do not come without consequences,” Chua warned, noting that the economic restraints will have long-run costs to future generations, especially on the country’s human capital.

"Without understanding these, we would not have a complete and objective understanding of what we are doing today,” he added.

In particular, Chua estimated that the suspension of face-to-face classes in the school year 2020 to 2021 will cost future wages and productivity of Filipinos about P11 trillion.

There were also the lost wages of parents who forgo or reduce work hours to accompany their children in online classes, he added.

For this reason, Chua has called for the targeted resumption of face-to-face classes to help mitigate the long-term consequences of remote learning on students’ productivity and mental health.

“I would like to rally everyone to use this pandemic to get as much done as soon as possible. My concern is not just for today but for tomorrow and for my son’s generation,” the NEDA chief said.

“The most important thing is we pilot today so that our learnings can be applied in January 2022. Otherwise, the related productivity loss of P11 trillion will double if we do not open more schools in this school year,” Chua said.

Based on a NEDA study, COVID-19 is estimated to cost the economy a total of P41.4 trillion over the next 40 years.

“Our solid growth prior to the COVID-19 pandemic of over six percent, unfortunately, went way down in 2020 as we had to shut down 75 percent of the economy at the peak of the enhanced community quarantine,” Chua said.

However, Chua said the country can still better manage the of risks to allow the economy to grow by four percent to five percent this year and seven percent to nine percent in 2022.

He explained that this will pave the way for the country to return to the pre-pandemic growth path in the upcoming years.

“We have slowly recovered, and the latest number that we are seeing is a positive 11.8 percent growth in the second quarter,” Chua said.

According to Chua, the country’s various economic indicators point to encouraging prospects of economic recovery, citing the continued improvements in manufacturing production, external trade, public infrastructure spending, and job creation.

“People have learned to treat the virus as endemic, so I believe that the economy will continue to grow because of the data and the change of paradigm that we are seeing,” Chua said.