Palace: Surveys show shift to COVID alert level system effective in reopening economy

Acting presidential spokesperson Secretary Martin Andanar (INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / JOAN BONDOC)

MANILA, Philippines — Recent surveys showed that the government’s calibrated strategy of shifting to the COVID-19 alert level system was effective in reopening the economy and lowering the unemployment rate, Malacañang said Thursday.

Based on the Social Weather Stations survey, 51 percent of Filipinos believed that the economy will improve in the next 12 months.

“The Palace considers this rating, classified as ‘excellent’ by SWS and the highest net economic optimism since September 2016, as clear indication of how effective our calibrated strategy of shifting to Alert Level System to further reopen the economy – where more businesses are operating and more Filipinos are able to go to work – while ramping our COVID-19 vaccination drive,” acting presidential spokesperson Martin Andanar said in a statement.

The alert level system was launched in Metro Manila in September 2021 in a bid to balance health and economy.

Andanar added that Filipinos “have more reasons to feel confident about the future” as President Rodrigo Duterte signed an order, adopting a Ten-Point Policy Agenda.

“This indeed demonstrates that government has concrete plans to sustain our economic rebound,” he said.

The Ten-Point Policy Agenda covers the following:

• Strengthen healthcare capacity
• Accelerate and expand the vaccination program
• Further reopen the economy and expand public transport capacity
• Resume face-to-face learning
• Reduce restrictions on domestic travel and standardize local government unit (LGU) requirements
• Relax requirements for international travel
• Accelerate digital transformation through legislative measures
• Provide for enhanced and flexible emergency measures through legislation
• Shift the focus of decision-making and government reporting to more useful and empowering metrics
• Medium-term preparation for pandemic resilience

Unemployment rate

Earlier Thursday, the Philippine Statistics Authority reported that unemployment rate in the country has remained at 6.4 percent in February, although it was lower than the rate recorded in the same month last year.

“The improvement in the employment situation demonstrates the effective recalibration of our strategies with the shift to the Alert Level System, which allowed more Filipinos to rejoin the labor force. This is, indeed, concrete proof that our COVID-19 response is working,” Andanar said in a separate statement.

But because 3 million Filipinos were still unemployed, the Palace said that “more needs to be done.”

“Our Economic Team, for one, hopes to shift the entire country to Alert Level 1 and reap its full benefits, so more businesses would operate and more Filipinos would be able to find work,” Andanar said.

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