TO encourage families to go out and boost consumer demand, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has proposed to bring down age restriction in areas under general community quarantine (GCQ) to 10 years old.
Trade Secretary Ramon M. Lopez argued last Friday that the government should consider allowing families to go out as a unit in public spaces and commercial centers, such as malls. Lopez said this will motivate establishments to double their activities to the benefit of the economy.
As mandated by the government, only people aged between 15 and 65 years old are permitted to leave their houses to do essential activities. As such, Lopez disclosed there are retail stores who have yet to reopen to their full capacity, as they wait for the government to let the remaining age groups go out again.
“What’s important is to do it one at a time. For instance, at present, 15 years old is the youngest. We can bring that down to maybe 10 years old,” Lopez said in a television interview.
Lopez claimed that children aged 10 and above can be disciplined by parents and taught to comply with minimum health standards. He said he sees no problem in allowing families to go out as a unit for as long as all their members wear a face mask and face shield in public spaces.
“Some customers who should be patronizing our retail stores, commercial areas and malls, their movement is limited because of the age restrictions in place,” the trade chief explained.
“In other words, the markets who transact with these establishments have yet to come back to 100 percent as in pre-pandemic [period],” Lopez said. “As the number of people who can go out is limited, consumption is limited as well.”
Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick T. Chua had blamed the prohibitions on children and elders for dragging the recovery of an economy driven by consumption.
As the youth sector takes up majority of the population, bulk of the P21 billion in wages that the economy squanders every month to quarantine regulations comes from the restrictions enforced against family activities, Chua said. The median age in the Philippines is 25.7 years, and more than a third of Filipinos are aged 18 and below.
Government economists, backed by business groups, are pushing to reopen the economy to its near-full, if not full, capacity to reverse the losses on investments, revenue, jobs, among others, endured at the height of Covid-19 lockdowns last year.