COVID 19 is a huge blow that happened this 2020. We never really knew it was coming and to be honest, we were unprepared and clueless on how unimaginable it was in terms of bringing a great number of deaths and bringing down our economy for the worse. The article revealed to me how interconnected COVID 19 and how big deal its impact on our international trade. I strongly agree that it is a global scale crisis seeing in the news that everyone was affected, even the first world countries suffered so much. America and Europe, first world countries, blew their number of infected reports and death records, to make it worse, their global economy hit an adverse change from their spending, tourism, employment, and overall financial markets. What more damage it could give to us third world countries?
Personally, during this global pandemic, our family was slightly affected in terms of our purchasing and budget. My father continued working but for some families, some got laid off and lost their source of income which is unfortunate, and this is a reasonable cause why consumer spending was greatly affected. Every day, we try to survive and think practical and use our money wisely. I believe that the dramatic decline in our gross domestic product (GDP) and financial markets rooted since we were all undergoing a new normal, our lifestyle has shifted, and our spending became limited just like our capability to go out and earn money.
This global pandemic revealed a whole new level of health crisis and we individuals were not just affected but even our healthcare systems. The article mentioned that And I couldn’t agree more. Like what happened, we were all hit in a slightly different timeline. China started the great outbreak and we felt it in a delay, but the effect is not even less because as soon as tourists entered our country, the number of cases rose, and deaths continued to climb even how hard our medical system tried to warn us to stay indoors. Staying indoors, I witness some of my neighbours getting pregnant during this quarantine and personally, I am not even shock for the increase of population during these times. Without having a lot to do, many young couples got their time to reproduce.
The equilibrium between supply and demand was also affected with the global virus. Many international and domestic businesses filed bankruptcy as trade tensions became a challenge. I think because the imported goods are possible carriers of the virus, many people were cautious to support imported goods and other countries as well. Not only our purchasing power became limited, inflation and interest rates from international trade became more relevant and it saddens me that domestic companies here in the Philippines also suffer from international trade tension and because the government’s effort to support them is limited.
The National Budget for 2021 was already approved and will be a law soon and there has been an issue in regards to the first reading that they may not increase significantly the budget for healthcare departments even after this virus, clearly neglecting the health of the public, many people criticized this proposed budget and now that it is now approved in the final reading, the P4.5 trillion budget, but due to criticism from the people, the infrastructures’ 1% budget was allocated to the healthcare which is for the best and I am happy to know that.
We can’t avoid this pandemic anymore, but us individuals and the government can still do something to lessen the damage. The actions stated in the article really opened my mind that despite this global crisis, we have to stand stronger in terms of supporting global traders and lessen their burdens from tariffs, supporting our domestic exporters especially those who provide for medical equipment and food supplies. Lastly, as consumers with unlimited needs but limited supplies, the best we can do is to purchase wisely and prevent contributing to the possible second wave of outbreak by being responsible citizens.
