PH to sustain 11.8% GDP growth despite 2-week ECQ --- Roque
Malacañang on Tuesday, August 10, welcomed the 11.8 percent growth in gross domestic product (GDP) in the second quarter, saying that it is proof of the government’s ability to balance saving lives and livelihoods despite the pandemic.
However, despite the 11.8 percent growth in GDP, economists warned that this does not mean the economy is back to pre-pandemic levels since the GDP plunged by 16.9 percent in the same period last year, marking the start of the recession.
But Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the government hopes to sustain such “growth” in the last quarter of the year, which is traditionally the most robust period in the country’s economy.
“Patunay po ito sa gitna ng pandemya, pinag-i-ingatan natin ang buhay para sa hanapbuhay (This is proof that even in the middle of the pandemic, we are taking care of the lives for the livelihoods),” Roque stressed during his online media briefing.
He mentioned that the country’s economic managers believe this “robust performance” is not just driven by the base effects, where the latest GDP figure is compared to a much lower figure from the previous year and thus, the impression of a recovered economy.
READ: PH economy accelerates 11.8% in Q2
Quoting unnamed economic managers, Roque said that the GDP growth was a “result of a better balance between addressing COVID-19 and the need to restore jobs and incomes of the people.”
“Nagagalak po kami na nagkaroon tayo ng ganyan kataas na pagbangon ng ating ekonomiya (We are happy that we have that high recovery of our economy). And we are hoping po na bagamat tayo po ay naglockdown ngayon ng two weeks na makakabawi pa rin tayo sa last quarter (that despite we went on lockdown for two weeks, that our economy will recover in the last quarter),” he added.
The two-week lockdown in the National Capital Region (NCR) and other provinces from August 6 to 20 is due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the country as experts believe this new surge is driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant, a new mutation of the coronavirus.
READ: NCR to shift back to ECQ from Aug 6 to 20
The government reimposed its strictest quarantine classification, the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), in August which is also dubbed as a “ghost month” in business because of low profits.
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) on Tuesday announced the double-digit growth of the economy, the second time it happened since World War II. The first time was in the fourth quarter of 1988 when the GDP grew by 11.99 percent.