THERE is a scope to possibly further open the economy, especially in the National Capital Region (NCR), as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) CASES GO DOWN, A CABINET OFfiCIAL SAID.

Speaking at the 42nd National Conference of Employers on Wednesday, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Chua again highlighted the need to further but safely reopen the economy.

“So our estimated growth this year and next year will be a strong positive 6 to 7 percent this year, and 7 to 9 percent next year. This is going to be driven by three enablers, or pillars,” he said.

“The first is we have to open

the economy, MGCQ (modified enhanced community quarantine) or better at the appropriate time. I think in NCR, we have an opening, given the number of cases that we have been seeing, but we will still have to be very careful because of the new variants, but this also means that we not only open the supply side, we have to open the demand side, allowing children, families to go out with safeguards,” Chua added.

According to the Department of Health (DoH), NCR is now classified as a low-risk area due to the more than 20-percent decline in Covid-cases for the past two weeks.

DOH data showed that the average daily reported cases in the NCR declined to 945 from June 2 to 8; 825 from June 9 to 15; and 685 from June 16 to 22 from a high of 1,132 from May 26 to June 1.

Chua said that aside from further reopening of the economy, the government’s recovery package, and the timely implementation of the vaccination program will also help boost growth.

“So, last year we thought that like SARS 1, Covid would stay for six months, the reality today is it will probably stay for many years. But we have a lot of new learnings, we have to live with the virus, we have to manage the risk, and we have vaccines to help us, and we have to work together to prevent cases from increasing,” he said.

Chua vowed that the government will work hard on the vaccination program.

“In the next six weeks, we have 30 million doses coming in. This is our progress so far, 8.4 million vaccines have been delivered to the people and we have started with category A4 or the workers, and notice that we are moving actually quite fast on category A4. And hopefully we can vaccinate as many as we can the workers in the next few months,” said Chua.