NAME: Regala, Marie Claire G.

SECTION: BSA 2A

1. How the pandemic ruined the Philippine economy? Cite an example.

Our economy has proven quite resilient for decades…until COVID-19 came
along. Our economy finally met its Philippines, one of the high-risk countries from the
Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, recorded the first death outside China. The government
has announced lock-down of Metro Manila, followed by the entire Luzon island and is
mulling over more localised lock-downs. The Philippines government declared a state of
calamity in the country for six months on 17 March.
Disturbingly, health and education spending constituted the biggest drop in
consumer spending – as millions of students stopped going to school and people
with all manner of health problems stopped availing themselves of various
healthcare goods and service. Investment spending crashed as well (pulling
down growth by 13.9 percentage points) as construction projects and production
lines for durable goods such as machinery and equipment at factories were
halted Exports and imports plunged by 37% and 40%, respectively, as supply
chains around the world got disrupted and orders for various tradable goods
dried up. (The only reason net exports – exports less imports – “contributed”
positive growth in Figure 3 is because exports plummeted less than imports.
Services suffered the most. They were the first to go, being the most reliant on
face-to-face interactions through which the virus spreads and thrives. All sorts of
services collapsed, including transportation, storage, hotels, restaurants, real
estate, education. Only government services, financial and insurance services,
and ICT sectors saw any growth at all (for instance, services where work from
home is at all possible).

2. What are the major indicators of economic development for a country? Cite
an example.
To assess the economic development of a country, geographers use
economic indicators including:
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the total value of goods and services produced by a country in
a year.
Gross National Product (GNP) measures the total economic output of a country, including
earnings from foreign investments.
GNP per capita is a country's GNP divided by its population. (Per capita means per person.)
Economic growth measures the annual increase in GDP, GNP, GDP per capita, or GNP per capita.
Inequality of wealth is the gap in income between a country's richest and poorest people. It can
be measured in many ways, (eg the proportion of a country's wealth owned by the richest 10
per cent of the population, compared with the proportion owned by the remaining 90 per cent).
Inflation measures how much the prices of goods, services and wages increase each year. High
inflation (above a few percent) can be a bad thing, and suggests a government lacks control over
the economy.
Unemployment is the number of people who cannot find work.
Economic structure shows the division of a country's economy between primary, secondary and
tertiary industries.
Demographics study population growth and structure. It compares birth rates to death rates,
life expectancy and urban and rural ratios. Many LEDCs have a younger, faster-growing
population than MEDCs, with more people living in the countryside than in towns. The birth rate
in the UK is 11 per 1,000, whereas in Kenya it is 40.