Senator Imee Marcos on Wednesday said she was not impressed with the 11.8 percent growth in the country’s gross domestic product in the second quarter, as it was only due to the base effect.
“The official narrative is that Q2’s 11.8 percent is the highest growth we’ve posted since Q4 of 1988. But let’s get real: that apparent increase still condemns us to negative territory, relative to the 17 percent contraction of last year,” the chair of the Senate economic affairs committee said.
“Long way to go just to ‘get back to where we were before Covid!’” she added.
“Meanwhile, we still haven’t learned the twin lessons of this ongoing ‘close-open,’ on-and-off pattern of dreaded lockdowns in the last 18 months – that they only work if there is: 1) adequate social protection such as ‘ayuda’; and, 2) a relentless medical response of aggressive vaccination, testing and treatment,” Marcos said.
“Also, in the end, we need to generate jobs to fill the gap of lost economic activities or discover new ways such as e-biz to adjust these activities during a lockdown,” she said.
“Only by accepting that things will not go back to the old normal, and that we have to gear the economy towards a sustainable, digital, and healthy new normal can we minimize the catastrophic disruptions engendered by these never-ending lockdowns,” Marcos said.
Source: Latest Politics News Today (Politics.com.ph)
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