'Rolly' turns Philippines' bleak economic outlook gloomier
MANILA, Philippines — A battered economy just suffered a double whammy of pandemic and calamity after Typhoon Rolly sliced through farmlands in Luzon, potentially setting back agriculture asa this year’s only source of growth so far.
Assessment is already ongoing to gauge the economic costs of the world’s strongest typhoon to hit land, but at this early, Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua said the farm sector likely suffered a “major impact” from the calamity.
“Our experience with past typhoons have made us more resilient yet strong typhoons occur in largely agricultural region have major impact on the sector…,” Chua said in a Viber message on Monday.
“We are working on an assessment in coordination with other agencies,” he added.
Potentially losing agriculture as a growth driver in the final quarter of the year is bad news for an economy struggling to rebound from a pandemic-induced recession. In the second quarter, agriculture’s 1.6% growth tempered an already record slump of 16.5% for the gross domestic product, the sum of all goods and services created in an economy.
For the first half, GDP lost 9% of its value year-on-year due to the health crisis, and the Duterte administration had started loosening movement restrictions since June in hopes of bringing other sectors back to growth and mellow down the contraction to 6% by yearend.
With agriculture historically accounting for a tenth of GDP, Ruben Carlo Asuncion, chief economist at UnionBank of the Philippines, said Typhoon Rolly hit Bicol Region at the most inopportune time of harvest season which means farmers are likely to suffer lower output of rice, abaca and coconut— among the region’s top produce.
“November is harvest month if I’m not mistaken. I have seen some posts on farmers getting ahead of Typhoon Rolly and just harvesting what they can probably harvest,” Asuncion said in a text message.
“But, definitely, the impact of Rolly’s wrath cannot be denied, and it will, for sure, be taken into consideration when we recast our forecast after 3Q (third quarter) GDP print gets released this month,” he added. The third-quarter GDP is due for release on November 10.
A day after “Rolly” weakened and left Bicol area on Monday, Agriculture Secretary William Dar pegged the agriculture damage from the typhoon at P1.1 billion, an amount only bound to increase as more reports from the province get in.
Around a week before “Rolly” entered the Philippines, Typhoon Quinta also battered Southern Luzon. Currently, weather forecasters are tracking another disturbance, Tropical Storm Siony, which at one point was with “Rolly” inside the Philippine area of responsibility on Sunday.
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