Palace banks on vaccination drive against COVID-19 to improve GDP

Shot of human hands making an injection with a syringe (FILE)

MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang on Tuesday expressed optimism that the Philippine economy will soon recover as the government’s vaccination program against COVID-19 continues.

The Palace issued this remark after the country registered a negative gross domestic product (GDP) for the fifth consecutive quarter.

The Philippines’ GDP shrank 4.2 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2021, the Philippine Statistics Authority has reported.

“Patuloy naman pong umaakyat bagamat wala pa po sa positive ‘yung ating GDP growth,” presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said in an online briefing.

(The numbers continue to increase although our GDP growth has yet to become positive.)

“Hayaan niyo po, sa ating pag-iingat buhay, sa ating pagbabakuna, inaaasahan po natin na sa susunod na mga quarters ay magiging positibo na po ang ating GDP. Kaya naman po habulin yan, meron pa tayong walong buwan,” he added.

(Don’t worry, as we practice safety, as we vaccinate, we expect that our GDP will become positive in the next quarters. We can catch up, we still have eight months.)

The Philippines has so far received more than 7.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines. More than 320,000 have completed their two doses of vaccines while 1.7 million have received their first dose.

This May, the country is expected to receive 1.1 million more doses of the vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and 500,000 more doses of CoronaVac from China’s Sinovac.

KGA