A PRESIDENTIAL adviser said he is “extremely bullish” on the performance of the economy in 2022 as vaccination against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) gains momentum.
Palace Adviser for Entrepreneurship Jose Maria A. Concepcion III said at a Laging Handa briefing on Tuesday: “I am extremely bullish that 2022 will be definitely a much better year than 2021… We have the vaccines… We have the ammunition.”
“We want to end the pandemic this year (in order for businesses to) improve so that they can help the government by paying their taxes, and the government can continue to fund the vaccines,” Mr. Concepcion said.
Mr. Concepcion said the government cannot sustain buying vaccines for the population indefinitely.
“Eventually, this will have to go back to the private sector — us buying the vaccines. So, we (need) to have a vibrant economy to be able to afford buying these vaccines,” Mr. Concepcion said.
Mr. Concepcion said Metro Manila’s change to a stricter Alert Level 3 quarantine restriction poses no problems for businesses.
“This first quarter, there will be a decline in mobility since people spent all their money (on) Christmas spending. Normally, the first quarter is the slowest. There is no issue with the timing. What we saved was the most important quarter, the last quarter of last year,” Mr. Concepcion said.
“We have to restrict the movement of the unvaccinated. This cannot be the pandemic of the unvaccinated. We are trying to move from a pandemic state to an endemic state,” he added. — Revin Mikhael D. Ochave
