This was a terrible year, a time when what we experienced was something we could never have imagined happening in our lifetime. The worst during the year, more than experiencing a friend or relative succumbing to COVID-19, was perhaps realizing that this pandemic was going to stretch on.
While there is now a vaccine that should provide humans some immunity to the COVID-19 virus, it will still take months before world health scientists can say the worst is over and we can venture back to a normal life without social distancing, facemasks, face shields, and a bottle of hand sanitizer.
Aside from the pandemic, across the world, there have been equally tragic natural events: bushfires in Australia that razed millions of hectares; wildfires in California that claimed people’s lives and homes; typhoons, hurricanes, and tsunamis of increased frequencies and severity; and earthquakes.
There have been floods too, now many a confluence of extreme weather and man’s dam-building follies, encroachment on forestlands, and greed for timber. And let’s not forget the Beirut explosion caused by regulatory neglect that has become another first in the Book of Guinness.
Fragile economy
In the Philippines, 2020 was the year when our record of economic growth encompassing 84 quarters was broken in just 15 days when the government called for a total lockdown starting March 16. During that quarter, the gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 0.2 percent.
An unpreparedness in dealing with a pandemic had all but smashed years of gains, exposing a fragile economy that is now regarded to suffer the worst fate within Asia, and likely to end the year with an 8.3 percent GDP decline as the government continues to enforce varying degrees of quarantine measures.
It is time to seriously review how we have handled this crisis, not to point fingers at each other, but to come up with better ways to allow the economy to continue running while mitigating the spread of a virus and loss of lives.
Deep scars
According to the consultancy firm Oxford Economics, the Philippines has suffered one of the deepest scars resulting from the pandemic, and recovery may be more challenging over a far extended period because of high unemployment and skills shortages and the economy’s dependence on tourism.
Fitch Solutions points to a severe contraction in household spending caused by joblessness and a significant reduction in overseas remittances, two indicators that have previously driven our economic growth despite weak fiscal policies.
The unemployment rate has more than doubled to 10.4 percent this year from 5.1 percent last year, as thousands of businesses closed shop due to the enforced quarantines that had constrained people from spending on consumables, entertainment, and recreation.
With the quarantines easing in recent months, furloughed workers are slowly returning to their jobs – but this recovery has still left hundreds of thousands of families forced to face a bleak Christmas celebration.
Until the government is able to chart a better recovery plan balancing the health and economic needs of the country, a return to normalcy can only be expected at the earliest in 2022, which could put the Philippines on the map to have the longest recuperation period.
Biggest losers
Sectors in the Philippines that face the biggest losses in terms of money and jobs because of the pandemic-induced lockdowns are tourism, transportation, entertainment, and recreation. Successive typhoons, on the other hand, wrought huge agricultural losses.
It will take time for sectors affected by the pandemic to bounce back, especially those of small and medium-sized enterprises that had permanently shuttered.
Especially with regards tourism, the next two years will best be spent on coming up with a catch-up plan that hopefully will be able to hold up against those of other countries that had heavily relied on foreign visitor spending to boost economic income.
Depressed household earnings have harshly affected sales of private vehicles, and until depleted savings are replenished and normal purchasing power restored, the automotive industry will languish at levels that had not been seen in the last decade.
Malls that thrive on consumers willing to spend money for leisure dining, shopping, and other recreational activities will, likewise, experience trying times with rentals drastically reduced and income from surviving stores at comparatively lower levels.
Lost year
Being perennially in the path of typhoons has given the country some resiliency in weathering crop damages, and as our disaster mitigation efforts ramp up, losses from destroyed agricultural lands should be covered by better compensation mechanisms.
What the country has lost forever in 2020 is a year of knowledge building by our school-going youth, even those enrolled in private schools whose students are blessed with better financial resources.
Halfway through the school year, our educators are realizing that the 24 million students of a developing country like ours are the biggest losers as they try to navigate a learning environment that depends on a stable internet connectivity and a teaching army that has never been lauded for its agility to change.
Sadly, until the nation returns to face-to-face learning, we can only expect our literacy levels to remain at levels during pre-pandemic days, which was at the bottom rungs.
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