The extension of the enhanced community quarantine in major areas in Luzon will likely result in economic contraction in the second quarter, an economist said Friday.
“The almost two-week extension to the lockdown will eat well into [the] second-quarter growth, scuttling any chances of positive GDP in that quarter,” ING Bank Manila senior economist Nicholas Antonio Mapa said in a message to Manila Standard.
“We are awaiting an increase in fiscal spending to match the almost four-week extension to the original ECQ,” Mapa said.
The original month-long enhanced community quarantine in Luzon was supposed to end on April 12 but the government decided to extend it to April 30.
President Rodrigo Duterte, following a meeting with the Inter-Agency Task Force, extended for the second time the quarantine period until May 15, 2020 in the National Capital Region, Calabarzon, Central Luzon and a few provinces in Luzon where there are high number of infections.
He said the move aimed to effectively contain the spread of the disease that already claimed the lives of hundreds of individuals in the country.