Villanueva: Efforts to boost economy to ‘fail’ unless COVID-19 infection rate addressed

FILE – Senator Joel Villanueva. (Joseph Vidal/Senate PRIB)

MANILA, Philippines — Efforts to boost the economy will “fail” if the government does not address the continuing increase of COVID-19 cases in the country, Senator Joel Villanueva said Tuesday.

“Our government must once and for all arrest the increase of COVID-19 cases to boost economic activity,” the senator said in a Zoom meeting with reporters.

“As long as the infection trend is upward, all our efforts, lahat ng ating ginagawa to restart our economy, tulungan ang ating mga manggagawa, will all fail miserably unless ma-address natin ito, itong infection trend na ito na going upward,” added Villanueva, chair of Senate committee on labor, employment and human resources development.

(As long as the infection trend is upward, all our efforts to restart our economy and help our workers will fail miserably unless we address the upward infection trend.)

The Philippines has so far recorded 30,362 COVID-19 cases. The number of new cases on Monday is 630, of which 467 were “fresh” while 163 were “late.”

“Until we see a stop or a downward trend of the infection dito sa ating bansa, hindi talaga, everything will all fail. We have to do better. We have to address this infection, this upward trend,” Villanueva further said.

(Until we see a stop or a downward trend of infection in the country, everything will all fail. We have to do better. We have to address this infection, this upward trend.)

Apart from the high number of COVID-19 cases, Villanueva said another “stumbling block” to the path of economic recovery is the “lack of clear set of policies to help workers adapt to the new normal.”

“I believe to achieve all of this, the government must not hesitate to spend on our labor force,” Villanueva said.

“Not only because I’m the chair of the committee on labor, I think we must understand that at this point in time, investing in our workers will make or break our country’s economic recovery. I think that’s the bottomline,” he added.

CFC