ECQ, GCQ, mGCQ, etc.

PHILIPPINES - In Brief 02 Jul 2020 by Romeo Bernardo

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Late Tuesday night, President Duterte decided to keep Metro Manila under General Community Quarantine (GCQ) for another two weeks. This, notwithstanding a plea from Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez for the country’s capital and the neighboring region of Calabarzon, together accounting for close to 70% of the economy, to shift to the less restrictive modified General Community Quarantine (mGCQ) “as quickly as possible”. mGCQ is the most relaxed quarantine classification allowing movement even for non-essential activities and permitting more businesses to operate either at partial or full capacity. (Table 1) Government estimates that about 75% of the economy will be opened up under mGCQ compared with less than 60% under GCQ. Although experts we consulted think the above numbers on the optimistic side especially after considering transport constraints, they agree with the estimated increment in economic activity of shifting from GCQ to mGCQ. Their estimate, based on the number of workers that will be permitted to physically go to work, is that up to 60% will be opened up under mGCQ vs. 45% under GCQ. While recognizing that the country would have to learn to live with covid-19 for some time yet through distancing and masking, economic managers have apparently been counting on more relaxed quarantine conditions by 3Q to allow people and businesses to resume work and repair badly damaged balance sheets. It is noteworthy that among the largest economies of Southeast Asia, the Philippines has the most stringent quarantine conditions as measured by Oxford’s Government Response Stringency Index (Chart 1) that the Asian Development Bank noted is associated with weaker economic ...