A hard-earned Christmas

I may complain about the traffic nowadays, but I remind myself that this is a good problem to have.

We are bouncing back after one of the darkest chapters in our history, and we should be glad for it. Every Christmas after 2020 is a hard-earned Christmas, and I will tell you why.

In August 2021, the Philippines was reporting more than 10,000 NEW Covid cases daily. By that time, hundreds of people were dying from Covid every day, and we haven’t been able to vaccinate more than 10 percent of the population. The provinces were also feeling the effects as travel restrictions prevented people from going on vacations and goods weren’t moving as freely as they did. Conferences were canceled, as well as revenue-generating festivals.

On the advice of experts from OCTA Research, I pushed for a two-week lockdown in the National Capital Region in the middle of August to curb the rise in cases and head off the deadlier Delta variant of Covid. Thankfully, the government listened and had the political will to implement what must have been a difficult decision. The Philippines was already gaining unwanted attention for having one of the world’s strictest and longest pandemic-caused lockdowns, and here we were, pushing for even stricter mobility restrictions in the National Capital Region, the heart of business and commercial activity in the country.

I was not spared from criticism for pushing for the two-week lockdown, but I trusted the science which argued that this short-term inconvenience would result in long-term gains. If we locked down in August, we can look forward to a Christmas where Filipinos could freely go about their holiday.

And we did.

I say this to put some perspective on how far we’ve come. The progress made since the challenging times of 2020 is remarkable. If analysts are correct in their projections, 2023 might also deliver even higher spending numbers.

Consumer spending is important to small businesses and it is important to governments. It feeds on consumers’ confidence that there is more income to come and that the rise in prices is still manageable.

Consumer spending plays a vital role in economies like the Philippines, where domestic consumption