Nationwide face-to-face learning to add P12 billion per week to economy —NEDA

The nationwide resumption of face-to-face or in-person classes would boost the economy’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said Tuesday.

During a Palace briefing, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and NEDA chief Karl Kendrick Chua said opening all 60,743 schools for in-person learning would increase economic activity by P12 billion per week.

This was on top of the estimated P16.5 billion to be added to the country’s gross domestic product each week that the entire Philippines is under Alert Level 1, the NEDA chief noted.

Chua said the P12 billion per week additional economic output would come  from the resumption of “services around the schools like transport, dorms, food stalls, school materials and so on.”

The country’s chief economist said that the Philippine economy had lost P22 trillion for the two years of face-to-face learning closure.

He said around P11 trillion in productivity losses every year could be averted if in-person learning resumed nationwide.

So far, only 1,726 schools or 2.9% of all schools nationwide were conducting face-to-face classes. Meanwhile, citing data from the Department of Education, Chua said that 6,213 schools were ready to conduct in-person classes.

“As the vaccination rate of children increases, opening all schools for face-to-face learning will provide a big boost to the economy and improve the learning and productivity of children,” the NEDA chief said.

Furthermore, the resumption of face-to-face classes would improve learning outcomes by around 50%.

It would also “free up time for one-fourth of parents, who skip work or reduce work time to accompany their children in home learning.” — DVM, GMA News