The Global Health Crisis Affected the Economy of an Emerging Metropolis: The Case of Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines

Abstract

This paper estimates the impact of government strategies that aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19, to the local economic activities of Cagayan de Oro - a highly urbanized city in the Northern region of Mindanao. In the absence of city-level measure for Gross Domestic Product (GDP), gross sales among the 20,626 registered businesses are utilized as an alternative determinant. GDP measures the amount of output produced of a certain area within a specific time-period. Cagayan de Oro is predominantly food sector dependent contributing to almost 80% of its local economic activities. BPO, however, is the fastest growing sector but the food industry is near second. The gross sales of BPO, Tourism and Construction recorded the highest increase for the past ten-years, which indicates that these sectors are massively growing within the city. Using a simple moving-average equation from the business registration data of the City Finance Office from 2010-2019, this paper discovers that the friction created to slow down economic activities cost the city P131, 704,672.26 of foregone sales per week. The estimated impact of a week-long lockdown in the food sector amounts to P645,296,177.66 or a per capita loss of income of P2,428.95. In other words, the impact of lockdown to one food company is around P2,000. Per-capita cost is bigger among medical (P6,631.40) and construction (P7,747.14) firms considering lumpy inputs and higher set-up costs. A one-week lockdown leads to a P104,840,708.03 and P84,954,117.49 of foregone sales in the medical and construction sectors, respectively. This paper also locates the business concentration landscape and potential of Cagayan de Oro City among its 80 barangays and calculates the estimated revenue loss of each sector located among these barangays.