PHL STILL SEEN AS LAST TO RECOVER IN APAC ON SLOW CONTAINMENT

THE Philippine economy is expected to be the last among 14 Asia Pacific countries to recover to its prepandemic state, international think tank Moody’s Analytics said in a recent report.

In his most recent Asia Pacific Economic outlook, Moody’s Analytics economist Steven Cochrane said out of the 14 countries being monitored in the Asia Pacific, five countries—china, Vietnam, Taiwan, New Zealand and India have already exceeded their fourth quarter of 2019 economic performance in 2020.

Most of the countries, however, are expected to follow suit this year. Korea, Australia, and Indonesia are all expected to recover back to their end-2019 levels in the second quarter of 2021. Hong Kong and Japan are expected to follow in the third quarter and Singapore will recover in the fourth quarter of this year.

Only three countries are seen recovering on the tail end: Thailand is expected to recover in the first quarter of 2022, Malaysia in the second quarter and the Philippines in the third quarter of 2022.

“The Philippines has multiple factors working to slow its pace of recovery. It is coming out of a very deep hole, as it languished under quarantine orders for much of last year. It continues to struggle to contain Covid-19, its fiscal policy response was quite limited, it has not yet developed an effective delivery system for vaccinations across its archipelago and rising food prices limit the role of consumer spending to support the local economy,” Cochrane said.

Across the region, the economist said the pace of vaccination will begin to boost the regional economy in the second half of the year. The US recovery is also expected to have multiplier effects via trade in the region.

However, Cochrane said among the major Asia Pacific countries, only the Philippines and Thailand “still appear to be lagging in their procurement of vaccines.” They forecast, however, assumes that Thailand and the Philippines will eventually acquire the needed vaccines as the number of sources expands.

Aside from being a laggard in the vaccination rollout, Moody’s Analytics also said the Philippines is among the countries that is still struggling to control the spread of the virus.

“Containment of Covid-19 in the Philippines has been elusive. After gradually falling from August to February, the number of new cases is rising again, and some quarantine measures are still in place. And pork prices have risen, caused by African swine fever, and vegetable prices have increased, caused by lingering impacts of last year’s typhoons,” Cochrane said.