By CHINO S. LEYCO President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s economic development cluster (EDC) will assess this week the impact of the current outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) that already took a toll on the country’s tourism revenues, the Department of Finance (DOF) said. Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said that the Cabinet-level committee focused on the promotion of rapid, inclusive, and sustained economic growth will meet on Tuesday to assess the possible impact of COVID-19 across industries. “Right now, what we see of the impact of COVID-19 is essentially on tourism — that’s very clear now. What's not so clear is the impact on the productive capacity of our trading partners and the supply chain and also the demand for our products,” Dominguez said. But Dominguez revealed signs of disruption in the supply chain as early as February, noting the 50 percent drop in the number of containers arriving at Philippine ports from China, which is Manila’s biggest source of imported goods. “We're still parsing the data to find out which industries these are,” Dominguez said. “We should get the clearer picture sometime next week, although I've heard, some stories that people are having a hard time now getting computer parts, and so on and so forth.” For the tourism sector, Dominguez said the industry already felt the pinch of COVID-19 outbreak following the 41 percent drop in arrivals in February alone. “The major effect so far, it has been on the tourism sector,” President Duterte’s chief economic manager and EDC chairman said. Asked about the need to revisit the Duterte administration’s macroeconomic assumptions for 2020, Dominguez said that will depend on the numbers the Development Budget Coordination Committee would get from the EDC meeting. Last Friday, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimated that the country’s tourism revenues may decrease by $801.4 million to $2.25 billion this year, depending on how the COVID-19 outbreak evolves in the Philippines. Currently, there are at least five confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the country. Under the best-case scenario, or an assumption that travel bans and precautionary travel behavior will last for only two months, the local tourism sector would incur $801.4 million in losses. In a moderate scenario, where precautionary behaviors and restrictions such as travel bans start easing three months after the outbreak intensified, the decline in tourism revenues is about $1.16 billion, But if the ill-effects of the COVID-19 would last for six-months, the “worse-case" scenario would cost the tourism industry about $2.25 billion. Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia had said the economy is likely to shed up to one percentage point should the COVID-19 outbreak extend for a year, putting at risk the government’s growth target of 6.5 percent to 7.5 percent. If the virus is contained in China by June, COVID-19’s impact on Philippine GDP growth is likely a cut of 0.3 percentage point, Pernia said.