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 think-tanks 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.