IMF: PH HAS THIRD BIGGEST OUTPUT LOSS IN ASIA-PACIFIC

The Philippines had the third biggest output loss among the 35 countries in the Asia-Pacific Region, according to the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook.

Only Timor-Leste and the Maldives were ahead of the Philippines in terms of output losses for the Asia-Pacific Region that it charted in what it said was “unequal suffering” that countries experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The IMF findings show that Taiwan experienced the least output loss followed by Nauru, Japan and China. Among the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Singapore and Vietnam had enviable records in terms of the output losses they suffered due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Explaining its chart, the IMF said “the aggregate figures mask an enormous range of output losses across economies, from close to zero in China, Japan, and Taiwan PoC to more than 20 percentage points in the Philippines and even 30 points in East Timor.

The divergence is especially sobering for the Pacific islands and other low-income countries in the region, where lives and livelihoods will depend on additional international support.”

IMF’s research of experiences of the country identifies four main reasons for the large disparity.

The first was that of health factors such as the effectiveness of containment measures and the human toll of the disease, the second, the magnitude and effectiveness of policy support, third the countries’ economic structure, including the dependence on tourism and contact-intensive service sectors and fourth, other structural factors such as informality have exacerbated the economic cost of lockdowns and weighed on the recovery.

The Multilateral agency said in the Philippines, “the high concentration of economic activity in the Manila metropolitan area, weak transportation infrastructure, low capacity in the health sector, poverty, and a high share of informality, have together significantly complicated enforcement of containment measures and the ability to provide targeted support to the most vulnerable."

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