Will MGCQ bring in more diners?

By Art Jimenez

The quarantine roulette wheel has turned to Modified General Community Quarantine for Iloilo City and the rest of Western Visayas, except Bacolod, effective September 1 to 15. We sort of graduated from being aligned under GCQ (sans the descriptive “Modified”) in the last fortnight with other southern cities that are chockful of COVID-19 cases like Cebu, Lapu-Lapu, and Mandaue.

Less stringent than other levels, MGCQ allows freer movement and opening of business establishments. The only main constraint is border control that filters inbound and outbound travel across boundaries. Bar that constraint, we expect our city economy to improve and even look forward to living under the “New normal” sooner than later.

But by how much can we anticipate our local economy to improve during the first half of this month and even if we see fewer pandemic infections till year-end? Has our city planning and development board calculated such improvement (say, in city GDP growth) under each quarantine classification we are placed under? I certainly hope so. If not, I prefer to think they’re working on it.

Our national economy consists of three major sectors. They and their respective contribution to our country’s GDP are: Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing, 10.0 percent; Industry, 27.7 percent; and Services 62.3 percent. Iloilo City has the same profile, more or less. As a highly urbanized city of concrete materials, our Agriculture subsector is limited in coverage with its already shrunken productive rice farms still being illegally converted to residential subdivisions and malls (rather than sari-sari stores). We practically have no manufacturing activity to speak of. Construction, which has been robust in the last few years has grown lethargic due to the alphabet quarantines we have been subjected to since mid-March this year.

Thus we are left with the Services sector, which includes the following major subsectors: retailing, banking, transport, BPOs, and accommodation and foodservice.

For this column, let us give special attention to foodservice and their patrons. After all, in good times or in bad, people eat in and out.

First, the people or the diners. We are particularly interested in people who are allowed by DOH and IATF protocols to dine out. They are of the age 21 to 59 only. That means we exclude the underage and the overaged. TABLE I below presents our city population, classified by age group as of the last census year 2015, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.

TABLE I

Iloilo City Population

Both Sexes by Age Group

2015 Census

Based on the above info and according to the IATF protocols, those Under 1-20 and 60-above are “required to remain at home at all times except if indispensable for work in permitted industries and activities, or for obtaining goods and services. Also included are “those with immunodeficiency, comorbidities, or other health risks and pregnant women.”

Notice from TABLE I that the two excluded age ranges total 211,084 or 47.1 percent, which is nearly half of the total city population of 447,992. This means that the potential market size of restaurant dine-in customers is reduced by almost half as only 236,908 people are potential restaurant patrons.

By the way, before the border controls, Iloilo City’s daytime population used to swell by at least 10 percent mostly owing to out-of-town people working in the city, shoppers, and other visitors. But since not all of these non-IC residents are not allowed unlimited entry, we are basically stuck with 236,908 plus a few thousand added to our population from 2016 to the present, which should be underage anyway and therefore don’t count in our dine-in market size estimation.

But for simplicity of numbers, let’s assume a rounded number of 240,000 people allowed to go out anytime between curfew hours. How many of them will patronize stand-alone restaurants (like Tatoy’s and Breakthrough) and mall-based restaurants and fast-food eateries each day of the week, now that we are under MGCQ? And yes, how many will eat at carinderias and food stalls?

A hint. Age restrictions as mentioned above remain likewise under MGCQ even if restaurants could raise operating capacity from 50 to 75 percent.

So what gives? (To be concluded)