On the plan to escape from the Herbert Hoover trap

THAT economic managers are pushing for less restrictions and a shift to modified general community quarantine (MGCQ), a proposal rejected by President Duterte, is understandable. A weak first-quarter performance, which is a certainty under the current restrictions, will set the trend for 2021, and that will validate what the multilateral institutions, foreign banks and international thinktanks have been saying all along — we will remain the region’s kulelat (doormat) in terms of recovery and rebound. No economic manager would want to go down in history as the steward of an epic meltdown. Who wants to be the Herbert Hoover of the 21st century?

It is this particular fear that has been driving all the planning to arrest the country’s economic hemorrhaging. And close 2021 with a mini-bang, not with a whimper. The economic managers have to keep pushing Mr. Duterte to green light their planned shift, or face the inevitable: a still anemic first-quarter performance; then, the inexorable march to three more disastrous quarters.

Then the validation of what the multilateral institutions have been saying all along — the Philippines is the regional laggard.

In the optimistic formulation of acting National Economic and Development Authority head Karl Kendrick Chua, the shift to MGCQ would trigger the return to near-normalcy, with 95 percent of all economic activities liberated from the GCQ restrictions. He is the top state economist and he has got it all figured out, so there is very little reason to doubt his simple but very compelling formula: MGCQ equals 95 percent of economic activities.

Still, some words of caution. He should look at the idled/operating capacity of land transport in the country, in the main region of Luzon — which turns out more than 80 percent of GDP — in particular. And here are the most relevant fiGURES — LESS THAN 5 PERCENT AND less than 30 percent.

Luzon’s barely-operational rail transport system (Where art thou, Bicol Express?) and inadequate, breakdown-prone LRT and MRT systems had the effect of making buses, provincial and metropolitan buses the de facto mass transport system. They were, prepandemic, the main mass carriers of people and baggage that moved nonstop between the provinces and the terminals in Metro Manila. The Ro-Ros made bus trips from various points in the Visayas to Metro Manila run with regularity, like ordinary commuter buses. The other travel options, then and now, are air and sea but airfare is costly and the interisland passenger trade is a dying sector. The ghost of M/V Dona Paz has all but killed the former glory of the coast-wise passenger movement.

Okay, here are the figures that Secretary Chua has to factor in for they come into play in his overall reopening effort. The first figure, less than 5 percent, represents the percentage of Luzon-based franchised provincial buses in operation. The second figure, less than 30 percent, represents the percentage of franchised Metro Manila buses currently in operation.

The return to 95 percent of all economic activities cannot take off if the idled capacity of provincial buses is at 95 percent and the Metro buses at 70 percent. The causality between economic reopening and the need to move the workforce for the reopening cannot be understated. Secretary Chua should seriously look at the state of mass transport in Luzon and take steps to align the planned reopening with the support transport requirements for the returning workforce. Factories, service establishments and critical sectors such as construction will not function without a mobile workforce.

Without adequate mass transport, the planned return to near normalcy — which would then lead to a vibrant rebound — will be doomed. And the current operational capacity of less than 5 percent for provincial buses and less than 30 percent for metropolitan buses will be too inadequate to support and complement the planned return to near normalcy.

Now, the question is this: Can Mr. Chua get total support from the transport mandarins? Can he convince the transport administrators to sync their transport policies with his planned shift to intensified productivity? Transport experts say that even an operational capacity of 50 percent for both Metro and provincial buses will not be adequate to support Mr. Chua’s reopening goals. And the reason is the existing health operational rules for public utility buses or PUBs that had been designed for a GCQ context.

Right now, under the GCQ, the maximum load of PUBs — whether Metro or provincial — is a maximum of 50 percent. A standard bus with 54 seats is allowed to load a maximum of 25 passengers, which is less than 50 percent. Even if the transport authorities were to adjust the operational capacity of PUBs at 50 percent under the planned shift, but with the limited seating still the rule, that would not be enough to serve the transport requirements of the reopening.

The current configuration of the transport routes, designed supposedly for the Covid regime, also discourages travel. Routes have been cut short. Instead of the usual straight trips from terminals in the provinces to terminals in Metro Manila for the provincial buses in the prepandemic regime, the routes are mostly short distances and end up at private terminals. Commuters now patronize colorum (without franchise) vans to go to Metro Manila instead of the buses because they want straight trips to the city. Because of their loathing for double or triple stops, commuters would rather take chances with these vans that offer straight trips but are noncompliant with IATF protocols than take IATF-compliant buses that unload passengers in the middle of nowhere.

In the Metro routes, it is worse. The current trip from Fairview in Quezon City to Alabang in Muntinlupa now takes three to four stops, instead of the straight trips of the prepandemic regime.

Mr. Chua’s tasks ahead, if his agenda is to put in place the adequate mass transport support to his planned reopening, are many. The most urgent are doing the policy work to increase the operational capacities of both Metro and provincial buses and making sure the PUBs that will run will make those straight trips instead of the chopped-off routes that we have now.