BusinessWorld
April 13, 2021 | 9:25 pm
(Second of three parts)
Economic prospects for 2021 look bleaker by the day as COVID-19 cases are rising and our Government can’t seem to get their act together in effectively distributing the vaccines available and managing more expertly the necessary balance between public health and the economy. In my own economic forecast, the Philippines shall continue to see paralyzing lockdowns as we suffer from additional surges of even more infectious varieties of this deadly virus. I do not expect positive GDP growth till the fourth quarter of the current year, coming mostly from the Government’s stimulus packages and the Build, Build, Build program. The only other major source of growth will be from the more than 10 million Overseas Filipinos who are literally our global front liners helping to carry the burden of the Philippine economy as our doctors, nurses, and health workers are the front liners caring for the health of the population. As I wrote in the first part of this series, we can expect as much as a 7% increase in the remittances sent by Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) to their relatives at home for the whole of 2021.