Each major crisis brought major opportunity.
Each generation has a “once in a lifetime” life-changing experience. For my parents, it was the Second World War. For my generation, it was Martial Law. For this generation, it will be the COVID-19 pandemic. Each event lasted longer than anyone thought and was, at minimum, life-threatening to many.
And yet, each major crisis brought massive opportunity. The Philippines gained independence and rebuilt itself with a new generation of entrepreneurs after the Second World War. Post Edsa 1986 saw zigzagging political change in the first 15 years, and then a steady upward economic progress the next 18 years to the point where Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua of the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) said we were on the cusp of becoming an upper-middle-income country—before COVID-19 cruelly struck in 2020.
I, myself, have witnessed four major economic crises, effectively one per decade. In the Eighties, it was the Philippine debt moratorium in 1983-1985. In the Nineties, it was the Asian financial crisis in 1996- 1997. In the 2000s, it was the global financial crisis in 2008-2009. We thought that we had miraculously escaped the 2010s, but then Covid-19 hit us like a sledgehammer in 2020. Sadly, from being considered one of the best economies in Asia, we are forecasted to be one of the slowest to recover to pre-Covid levels.
As the president of the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP), I have outlined five crises that befell us in 2020: Health (pandemic), Economic (9.5 per cent negative GDP growth), Environmental (critical climate decade), Education (learning) and Social Justice (jobs, food, and values formation) crisis. As such, the 2021 MAP Board’s main theme is “The Great Reset: Leading for the Common Good” and its main programme is to “Safely Reopen the Economy”.
