The Filinvest group sees the need for government stimulus, continued private sector investments, and renewed consumer confidence to jumpstart the economy that has been derailed by the pandemic.

“Reigniting the economy is tantamount to saving the lives and the livelihoods of our countrymen,” said Filinvest Development Corporation President and CEO Josephine Gotianun Yap.

She said that the three catalysts are needed after “we have maneuvered the first half of this year, re-organizing our lives and businesses to ensure that we safeguarded the lives of our workforce and customers as we continued to serve our respective markets.”

Gotianun-Yap said economic revival can be achieved with the public’s diligence in following the hygiene and safety protocols.

“We have proven that we can work together to win this war. We witnessed in awe the bayanihan spirit of the private sector in bringing up the testing capacity by more than 10-fold, surely, we can reignite our economies by supporting government efforts and initiating measures that will lead to consumer and investor confidence,” she noted.

With the aim to steer the economy back on track, the Filinvest group supported the Management Association of the Philippines’ initiative to bring together local and international thought leaders in a Web Conference dubbed “A Whole New World: Reigniting the Stalled Global economy.”

Following a World Bank June 2020 Global Economic Prospects report that forecasts a 5.2 percent contraction in global GDP in 2020 —the entire world is in the thick of the deepest global recession in decades.

This is despite the extraordinary efforts of governments and businesses alike to counter the downturn with fiscal and monetary policy support as well as attempts to reboot economic activity.

For its part, Filinvest, a member of the Public-Private Sector T3 (Trace, Test and Treat) Core group has been an active participant with a P100 million war chest for the COVID war.

The company distributed ventilators, PCR machines, rapid test kits and PPEs to different government hospitals and partner LGUs.

For the government’s part, businesses look forward to the implementation of the Bayanihan 2 Bill that providesP140 billion in regular appropriation and P25 billion as standby funding to cushion the effects of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Bulk of the budget is aimed for the loans to support micro, small and medium-scale enterprises, the tourism industry and transportation and agriculture sectors which were badly hit by the pandemic.

The measure also allocates allowances to students in both private and public elementary schools, high schools, and colleges whose families were affected by work stoppage due to lockdowns. “With the government stimulus in the pipeline, private sector’s initiatives and the public’s cooperation, I think our economy can definitely recover, it may be a gradual recovery but the important thing is we keep the bayanihan spirit alive,” Gotianun-Yap added.