Is Cebu prepared for what’s coming?

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed Cebu’s weakness in relying too much on tourism and its related service sector as a major economic driver. Prior to the pandemic, tourism has been one of Cebu’s major source of economic growth. According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, of the 7.6% growth rate of the region’s economy in 2018, 3.9% of that is from services of which tourism played a major role, 3.6% from manufacturing or industry, and only 0.1% from agriculture, hunting, forestry, and fishing.

Services accounted for 56% of the economy of Central Visayas. But a remaining bright spot in the region’s service sector in this pandemic is the business process outsourcing subsector. Its income continues to flow particularly to the young and educated workers in the city.

Cebu Province’s emphasis on outdoor tourism is excellent as long as the health protocols are firmly in place and consistently implemented. But if daily cases of new coronavirus infections continue to hover in the triple-digit figures, that will only dampen tourism demand from visitors. Fudging with the numbers and facts on the infection is not an option. Unless we are in China or North Korea, people will eventually know the real score.

A lockdown may be out of the question too; no one wants it back even at this point. Yet we need to keep our infection cases down. And without a lockdown, that only means that most people must cooperate and follow health protocols while outside their homes.

Cebu has yet to see the full economic impact of the pandemic. Just look around the metro and you’ll see not just near-empty malls but also service-related shops starting to close for good one after another. Despite the recent spike in COVID-19 cases, restaurants that are slow to adapt to a combination of open-air and dark kitchen model are still dreaming that dine-in customers will be back (a dark kitchen is a delivery-only restaurant using the latest technology and new marketing techniques to reach their home-based customers).

The key to Cebu’s economic revival, I think, lies in its younger, educated population and its more dynamic sectoral players. Many of our key players and stakeholders in the public and private sectors have been so shell-shocked by the pandemic’s impact that their mindsets are still instinctively longing for the old normal. We are clinging our hopes on the arrival of the vaccines, thinking that things would go back to normal after several months of waiting. But according to some experts interviewed by credible publications like The Economist, the world ahead after COVID will never be the same.

That is why some have decided to move on. A hotel I know has set up a dark kitchen model and is doing well in this regard. Churches have found ways online to reach the faithful. Schools have been plodding along with new online learning systems and continuous retraining of teachers. The future of education lies in hybrid pedagogies combining face-to-face learning with online remote learning.

The era of the four walls of the classroom and office is over. Physical infrastructure will still be there but it will be redesigned and merged with technologically adaptive methods including digital remote technology. Online commerce and virtual experiences will continue its steep growth trajectory. More jobs will be created in this regard.

Cebu may actually be in a better position, compared to other places in the country, to adapt to these changes. But who among our leaders and stakeholders can articulate this paradigm shift? I leave that up to you, dear readers, to answer.