Moody’s, Oxford see Delta affecting PH recovery
The highly contagious COVID-19 Delta variant could further slow down the economic recovery in the Philippines until 2025, according to a statement released by experts last Tuesday.
Moody’s Analytics senior Asia-Pacific economist Katrina Ell and associate economist Dave Chia said in a report that because of the presence of the new variant, the country would need “additional fiscal stimulus to do the heavy lifting.”
Ell and Chia added that the pending Bayanihan 3 bill would not be enough to rescue this year’s GDP. “Even if this latest package is forthcoming in the Philippines, we maintain that our existing GDP forecast for 2021 of 4.9% has downside risk,” they stated.
Meanwhile, Oxford Economics predicts that the Philippines, along with India, will “experience especially large losses given sharp falls in investment and higher unemployment rates” until the year 2025.
The UK-based think tank stated that “investment in the Philippines was still 25-percent below pre-COVID-19 levels in the first quarter of 2021 and the unemployment rate in the second quarter was nearly double what it was before the pandemic.”
