The recent shift to a more relaxed alert level in Metro Manila will lead to an additional weekly output valued at P7.1 billion, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said.
The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases has earlier decided to ease the level of restriction in the National Capital Region (NCR) to alert level 3 from October 16 to 31 amid the improving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) situation in the region.
“Per the computation of NEDA technical staff, the de-escalation from alert level 4 to alert level 3 in NCR will result in additional output worth P7.1 billion per week,” Karl Kendrick Chua, socioeconomic planning secretary, told Malaya Business Insight in a Viber message Wednesday evening.
The government piloted the new alert system in Metro Manila from September 16 to 30 with alert level 4 and extended it up to October 15. This was further downgraded to alert level 3 in the second half of the month due to the decline in COVID-19 cases and reduced hospital utilization.
Chua reiterated during the Senate committee on finance hearing on NEDA’s 2022 budget last week that the economic team has pushed hard on further reopening the economy.
“That is, I think, one thing that we are seeing, we are moving away from ECQ (enhanced community quarantine), we have a new system, alert level 1 to 4, focusing only the quarantines or lockdowns on a more granular scale. I have also pushed the reopening of face-to-face class, we will pilot it next month,” Chua said.
“A lot of our restrictions, I understand, has been lifted, only focusing on three Cs: closed areas, the ones where you have close contacts, and crowds,” he added.
