By Jenina P. Ibañez, Senior Reporter

THE PHILIPPINE government has created its own scorecard to assess its pandemic response as it extends the fourth phase of its national action plan against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) introduced the scorecard on Monday as it criticized global indices showing the Philippines scored poorly in handling the COVID-19 outbreak.

“We are being compared against the other countries and there’s no consideration for country-specific COVID context,” NEDA Undersecretary Rosemarie G. Edillon said at a briefing.

As vaccinations lagged, the Philippines remained at the bottom of Bloomberg’s COVID Resilience Ranking last month, which ranked the best and worst places to be during the pandemic. The country improved to 103^rd out of 121 countries in the Nikkei Asia COVID-19 Recovery Index after ranking last a month earlier.

Ms. Edillon said these indices are useful because the Philippines can learn from how other countries reopened their economies.

But she noted that under the international rankings, indicators like the reopening of the economy or COVID-19 case count are equally weighted, which means that one indicator is used as if it could be substituted for another.

“The goal of the National Action Plan (NAP) Phase 4 is to manage COVID-19 towards a healthier and resilient Philippines,” she said. “The goal really is to balance these health and economic objectives.”

The fourth phase of the national action plan started in July and will be enforced until 2023. The phase focuses on sustaining a “new normal,” enforcing the updated Philippine Development Plan, and implementing the national vaccine roadmap.

Earlier phases focused on mitigating economic impacts, planning for vaccination, and managing health risks.

The phase 4 action plan aims to monitor COVID-19 case recurrences and outbreaks, standardize border control, reach COVID-19 immunization of 70 million Filipinos by the end of this year, and create a sustainable nationwide immunization program by 2023.

The plan also aims to promote aggressive contact tracing and enforce a plan to catch up on long-term COVID-19 impacts on learning and the supply chain.

The government’s scorecard assesses the country’s infection management, vaccine rollout, and socioeconomic recovery under this NAP Phase 4.

Under this scorecard, the government gave itself a score of 4.42 in September and 4.83 in October out of a total possible score of 9.

Infection management and vaccine scores improved as the number of critical COVID-19 cases declined and as more people received the jab. But the socioeconomic score fell as flight activities worsened.

“We had many flight activities that were allowed in September, but because of the surge in (COVID-19) cases then we brought that down in October,” Ms. Edillon said.

She expects the score in November to improve, but did not offer targets.

Metro Manila is currently under a more relaxed Alert Level 2, as new COVID-19 cases continued to drop. As of Monday, the Health department reported 984 new COVID-19 infections, bringing the active caseload to 19,798.

According to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, the Philippines has now fully vaccinated 30.52% of the population.

The Nikkei index assessed how much closer a country is to recover in terms of infection management, vaccine rollouts, and social mobility, while the Bloomberg index measures the effectiveness of COVID-19 handling with the least social and economic upheaval.

THE DEPARTMENT of Finance (DoF) is considering the possibility of getting foreign governments to buy out their citizens’ shareholdings in corporations that run coal-fired power plants in the Philippines.

Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III in a press release on Monday said the proceeds from the buyouts can be donated to fund a Philippine initiative to transition to clean energy.

These buyout proceeds could go into an Asian Development Bank (ADB) partnership that aims to fund the early retirement of coal-run power plants and replace them with renewable energy alternatives.

“If we can get the foreign governments to buy out those shareholders and donate the shares of that company to a government — to our government — or to a group, including ADB and other agencies, we can actually shut down that plant,” Mr. Dominguez said at the recently concluded 26^th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) held in Glasgow.

“And that foreign government would actually be making a contribution to reducing a coal-fired power plant.”

Some overseas companies, DoF said, have significant stake in the continued operation of the coal plants.

The ADB energy transition mechanism is a public-private finance program that plans to reduce coal-fired power generation by retiring coal plants and supporting renewable energy use.

The Philippines will pilot the project to buy and repurpose the coal-fired power plants in Mindanao while the capacity of the Agus-Pulangi hydropower plant is being upgraded.

“(The mechanism) will bring together concessional resources from donor governments and philanthropies, in close coordination with global climate change-focused funds, to leverage large amounts of commercial capital to trigger a decisive shift towards decarbonization,” DoF said.

The energy transition mechanism is made up of two multibillion-dollar funds, with one focused on quicker early plant retirement, while the other one is devoted to new clean energy investments in power generation, storage, and grid upgrades.

Multilateral banks, private institutional investors, philanthropic contributions, and long-term investors will provide capital for the project, ADB said.

A two- to three-year pilot phase would raise funds needed to speed up the retirement of five to seven coal plants and invest in clean energy in the Philippines and Indonesia.

Mr. Dominguez said employees working at a Mindanao coal-fired plant set for closure will be retrained to work in other energy projects.

“There are not a lot of people actually working in that particular coal-fired power plant, or in any coal-fired power plant. So it’s very easy to retrain them to do other projects,” he said.

He has been pushing for climate financing from wealthier economies that have not offered enough to help developing nations reduce their carbon footprints. Such countries bear the most responsibility for their historic emissions, he said.

The Philippines has committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 75% from 2020 to 2030. Of the 75% target, just 2.71% can be achieved with internal resources, while the remaining 72.29% would rely on international assistance. — Jenina P. Ibañez