THE newspaper headlines screamed the grimness of the country’s economic meltdown — a 9.5 percent drop in gross domestic product (GDP) that topped by 2.5 percent the worst ever recorded in our country’s contemporary history, the 7 percent fall during the end-years of the Marcos regime. It was the worst economic collapse post-World War 2 and the first negative GDP in 21 years — after the 0.5-percent mild slide in 2008, the peak of the global financial crisis.
In peso terms, roughly P1.5 trillion was lopped off the country’s economy. This means the dream of joining the middle economies within the medium term is no longer attainable. And the robust economy required to cut the poverty rate to tolerable — not abject — levels has vanished. The low base to which the pandemic and other related woes have pushed the national economy also means that the return to the prepandemic economy of 2019 would be a tortuous path if not a grim, grim slog. And this grimness cannot be papered over, as it is beyond the spinning power of Harry Roque Jr.’s bloviation.
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