Employers yesterday slammed the government’s move to restore strict quarantine measures and suspension of some economic activities for two weeks stating this will cost billions of pesos and reverse the growth momentum that just started early this year.

In a phone interview, Employers Confederation of the Philippines (ECOP) President Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr. said the economic loss is huge even if the new lockdown in the National Capital Region and neighboring provinces is only good for two weeks.

“This will cost billions because you are reversing the growth momentum,” said Ortiz-Luis. As he said this, Ortiz-Luis also strongly doubted the new lockdown would create a huge impact in the fight against COVID. There has been wide confusion in the implementation of the IATF Resolution on the new restrictions and suspension of some activities during the first week. “We are stopping the economic recovery momentum for what, for a very small impact?” he asked.

In terms of job losses, he said the estimate of 3.2 million workers who will be affected by the two-week lockdown by the National Economic and Development Authority should be accurate.

Ortiz-Luis also hit the medical group and the health advisers of President Duterte for their complete trust in the research group OCTA, which he said is only feeding misinformation to the President. He even discredited the credibility of the research group, which claims to be of the University of the Philippines, but are enjoying the limelight actually by scaring the people and the government.

He expressed relief though that the medical and health group of the government, which has so much faith in OCTA before, has already become doubtful and are now able to come up with better data.

As COVID cases in the country surged past the 8,000 daily level, Ortiz-Luis said the number of cases should not be used as the main determinant in addressing the health problem because majority or 95 percent of these cases are asymptomatic or mild cases, but the number of deaths. He pointed out that there are over 600,000 deaths on the average in the country annually or 50,000 a month. Thus, the 13,000 deaths due to COVID should not be alarming and has not really been increasing.

On their push for COVID vaccine importation, Ortiz-Luis said the private sector has all the resources to do their own importation at much faster and more efficient way. The reason the importation by the private sector through Go Negosyo is slow in coming (end second or third quarter this year) is because they are partnering with the government, he added. 

As to the indemnity issue as the reason the private sector cannot be allowed to import on their own, he said that government should still be responsible for the results of the vaccines imported by the private sector. But, he said, the indemnity issues should be used as a reason to ban the private sector from  importing on their own. 

The government has set aside P75 billion for COVID vaccine procurement, but Ortiz-Luis said the private sector would like to help and facilitate the importation. And since the government has set aside a huge budget for the vaccination, he said there is no need for them to donate a portion of their importation to the Department of Health, which will prioritize the vaccine allocation. 

In addition, Ortiz-Luis reiterated his proposal to suspend the implementation of the Data Privacy Law to facilitate easy and faster tracing of COVID-19 positives. This way, he said, the government will no longer spend for the costly contact tracing scheme. He noted that the government had already used up the additional P5 billion budget for the hiring of 50,000 contract tracers.   He also called for more cost efficient measures like exploring new medicines that are proven to treat COVID-19 infections in other countries, but are being barred by the big multinational pharmaceutical giants.