The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) has identified sectors that need to be strengthened as the country works on recovering from the economic impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
Rosemarie Edillon, NEDA undersecretary, in a virtual forum yesterday said in terms of focusing on recovery and resilience, the government will be adopting a systems approach with sectoral focus.
“These are the sectors… where we saw a number of weaknesses, and which we think should be strengthened: the food systems, health systems, learning systems, transport and logistics, wholesale and retail trade and the financial systems. We will be coming up with the development agenda,” Edillon said.
The NEDA official said the emphasis will be on digital transformation, research and development and innovation.
“We’re thinking that the first two years will actually be spent on addressing some of the immediate adverse effects of this COVID-19 but also laying down the foundation so that we can have this digital transformation,” Edillon said.
“That means actually building up on the digital infrastructure, addressing the gap in the digital infrastructure, all the while observing the principles of efficiency, equity, no one left behind, it has to still be inclusive, sustainability and resiliency, and founded on good governance and peace and security,” she added.
Edillon pointed out the economy is actually strong enough to recover.
“What we need to do is to give it that stability, especially with respect to this mobility restrictions, and so we are actually finalizing the National Action Plan phase four probably over the next two weeks,” Edillon said.
“What we have in mind is really to have this balancing act between the health and economic objectives, where the bottom line is that we will have a more stable business and economic climate,” she added.
Edillon said there will be an enhanced prevent, detect, isolate, treat, reintegrate and vaccination strategy.
“With respect to mobility restrictions, we’re hoping that we will now transition towards having granular lockdowns instead of having these area-wide, city-wide, region-wide, province-wide lockdowns,” Edillon said.
“It will require a lot more in terms of the data support and data analytics, but we have had several lessons already in the past, several learnings, and we will be applying this going forward,” she added.
