National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) launched the updated Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2017-2022 to Central Luzon stakeholders, giving emphasis towards a healthy and resilient nation.
Assistant Secretary Carlos Bernardo Abad Santos said because of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a shift in the trajectory in terms of PDP implementation thus it is important to again sit down, assess, and update the plan.
“We started updating in 2019 and we were about to finalize the initial updating in 2020. However, when the pandemic struck us, we had to again do another round of planning and we had to consider the impact and the effects of the pandemic in updating and revisiting the PDP,” Abad Santos said.
Under the updated plan, the long-term vision remains the same and has become more pronounced with the emergence of the new threats.
“We basically maintain the strategic framework of PDP, which is anchored on the Ambisyon Natin 2040 wherein we envision strongly rooted, comfortable, and secure life for all Filipinos. However, we reviewed each of the chapters and components and what we did is align these towards health and resiliency,” he said.
Abad Santos cited that COVID-19 yielded undesirable social and economic outlooks so the challenge is to craft and implement measures that address the health crisis while steering the country towards social and economic recovery.
“In crafting the updated PDP, we identified the trends that remain relevant to the current situation. However, COVID-19 is expected to exert an unprecedented impact on the global and regional development over the few years. With this consideration, we need to nimbly maneuver through various health, environmental, economic, social, political, and technological trends as we pursue our developments towards a healthy and resilient Philippines,” he said.
In order to achieve the goals of health and resiliency, the official mentioned the need to adequately and properly respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We are still in the middle of the pandemic, we have the second surge. We are still coping with it, and it is very important that we pursue the prevent detect isolate treat reintegrate strategy if we want to really push for a healthy nation,” Abad Santos said.
He also stressed the importance of the COVID-19 vaccination as a very important part of economic recovery.
“Right now, it’s so difficult to discuss about reopening the economy if we are constrained with our response strategies, if we are constrained in terms of social distancing, or we are constrained with production. We need to address that so we can get back on track and hopefully get back to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2021 in some areas, and in 2022 in some areas,” the official said.
Aside from the health aspect, he said that there is a need to develop a service continuity strategy to propel economic delivery.
“We need to enhance the delivery mechanism, especially in the government, to consider the new normal. Among these would be to streamline our processes, have technology-based processes, and innovate delivery mechanisms especially for social services,” he said.
Abad Santos also mentioned that the plan encompasses five areas in terms of building resilience including health system improvement, food security and resiliency, learning continuity, digital transformation, and regional development through the Balik Probinsya Bagong Pag-Asa program.