It took 12 long years before engineer Ryan Sagang tripled his income to ₱21,000 a month or $5,040 a year.
From the Aquino administration to the early days of the Duterte presidency, investors branded the Philippines the “Darling of Asia.” Duterte’s economic team was confident the country was on the road to upper middle-income status by 2022 — the end of his term as chief executive. The Philippine economy took a record 16.9% nosedive in the second quarter of 2020 with the harshest lockdowns and closure of international borders. The economy shrank by 9.6% full-year, the sharpest rate of decline since the government began collecting data in 1946.
“If you would turn around and ask the Filipino on the street and tell him: ‘Listen, did you know that you’ve almost doubled your wealth, your living standard in the last 10 years?’ They would look at you and say: ‘What mushroom have you been eating?’” Van den Brink said. “If we're closed and there's no work and with the prolonged ECQ , the take-home pay of employees also shrinks dramatically,” she said.
ING Bank senior economist Nicholas Mapa said: “Unfortunately because of the pandemic, we dug ourselves quite a big hole, set ourselves back. If you look at the numbers, we fell all the way back to 2016 GDP levels so that pretty much tells us we've lost three years’ worth of economic gains.”On the twilight of his term, Duterte may need to refocus growth goals that would resonate with workers like Engineer Sagang.