The country’s chief economist on Monday said resuming businesses up to full capacity would fast-track economic recovery before year’s end as availability of more jobs would also perk up consumer confidence.

Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua told the Philippine Economic Society’s annual conference that the economic team was pushing to impose shorter curfew hours as well as multiple work shifts so that more consumers and workers could contribute to the economy.

THE government’s projection that GDP growth will reach 6.5 to 7.5 percent next year can be achieved if it would pump more money into the economy, according to economists from the Ateneo Center for Economic Research and Development (Acerd).

Acerd said stimulus spending, and not the vaccine or herd immunity, will help the economy which contracted in the second quarter following the implementation of lockdown restrictions meant to stop the spread of Covid-19.

Signs and Wonders

By Diwa C. Guinigundo

On July 16, we wrote about what many believed to be the three initial signs of business revival after several months of the pandemic. They were the slower decline in external trade, the softer drop in manufacturing output and expansion in capacity utilization, all in May. We called these green shoots, but not quite at the time.

Updates on these backward-looking indicators would point to some promising improvements eight months into the pandemic. But it remains a mixed bag.

MANILA, Philippines — Soured loans of Philippine banks continued to pick up for the ninth straight month, hitting the highest level in more than seven years due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Preliminary data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) showed the gross non-performing loan (NPL) ratio of the banking sector rose further to 3.4 percent in September from 2.84 percent in August as restructured and past due loans continued to soar amid the economic fallout from the pandemic.

THE recovery of the Philippine economy may take longer than earlier anticipated as consumption spending remained subdued, local economists said following the release of third-quarter National Income Accounts (NIA).

On Tuesday, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) disclosed that GDP contracted 11.5 percent in the third quarter. With this, GDP in the last three quarters contracted an average of 10 percent.

The Philippine Economic Society (PES) had made a donation of PhP100,000 to the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) Medical Foundation, Inc., in support of Filipino frontliners who are leading the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. PES had made the donation on 30 July 2020.