Senator Sonny Angara on Wednesday called on the government to urgently craft a “resilience plan” that will allow the economy “to deftly evade” the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic and the shutdown of plants and back offices of Honda, Wells Fargo and other multinationals in the country.
Angara said this as the Senate finance committee opened a series of hearings that will draw a roadmap to create world-class products and services that will proudly bear the “Tatak Pinoy” brand.
“Yes, there is no vaccine yet against the virus. But in terms of protecting our economy, in increasing its defenses, I believe that the government must have a contingency plan,” he said.
Angara said the virus can put “some vulnerable sectors of the economy like tourism in the ICU if we do not mount measures that will cushion its impact.”
Angara’s committee had scheduled “all hands on deck” workshops on how “to evolve a consuming economy to one that produces and invests” long before the global crisis incubated in Wuhan, China.
“So in addition to the agenda of creating more jobs within the next decade, we are now faced with the challenge of protecting jobs within the next weeks or months,” Angara said.