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The Department of Commerce and Industry (DTI) is set up to authorize business establishments, mostly engaged in professional services, to operate at full capacity in areas under general community quarantine (GCQ), including Metro Manila, the epicenter of the virus.
Commerce Secretary Ramón M. López said Thursday that the DTI is preparing a circular memorandum that adjusts the operational capacity of industries in the GCQ areas. The order will allow most service sector companies to summon all their workers to return to their jobs as part of the government’s policy to reopen the economy.
BusinessMirror learned that the DTI is now in the final stages of writing the memorandum and will release the document this weekend or next week.
In September, López proposed to the Interagency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) to slide Metro Manila to modified GCQ, the most lenient level of quarantine imposed by the government. However, President Duterte decided on Monday to keep the region under GCQ until October 31.
Despite this, López insisted that the DTI will follow the direction of allowing industries to resume operations and increase their work capacity.
“Now that we are at GCQ, our move is still to reopen the economy. It’s okay if we enforce the GCQ until now, as long as we are opening up the other sectors that are partially closed, ”López said in a televised interview.
With this, the commercial chief announced that he will allow the full resumption of work in firms that offer professional services, citing among them legal and accounting, architecture and engineering, management consulting and computer programming.
Living with viruses
“We believe that six months later we learned to live with the virus in terms of handling it, protecting ourselves, wearing a mask, we even added a shield,” argued López. “These measures improved our numbers in the recent past.”
In addition, he noted that consumers are now returning, albeit with caution, to shopping malls and retail stores; as such, business owners should have the option of summoning their workers back to the site to serve buyers.
“As consumers return to their normal activities, at least [business owners] They have their hands free if they want their workers to go back to work. What we are looking for here is to generate more jobs, more income for our compatriots ”, explained López.
Local leaders, for their part, oppose DTI’s plan to allow commercial establishments operating at half capacity to run at full throttle even under GCQ.
The president of the Manila Metropolitan Council, Edwin L. Olivarez, said Wednesday that the number of people in commercial areas, such as shopping centers, should still moderate. As a commitment to the business sector, he revealed that the mayors of Metro Manila are evaluating the option of lifting the curfew to allow companies to operate extended hours.
The quarantine that restricts trade on all fronts, from work to travel to commerce, has caused the economy in the second quarter to contract 16.5 percent, the worst reading since 1981, increasing the number of Filipinos. hungry and unemployed.
The country’s unemployment rate in July nearly doubled to 10 percent, from 5.4 percent during the same period last year, according to the Labor Force Survey. This translated into some 4.6 million Filipinos out of work in a time of economic crisis.
In particular, the regions with the highest unemployment rates are mostly under GCQ so far, such as Metro Manila, 15.8 percent, and South Tagalog, 12.4 percent.
