#MINDANAO By JOHN TRIA John Tria As many local economies engage slow, safe recoveries from enhanced community quarantines, future resilience and confidence is premised  on their economic strengths and the opportunities encountered. This sustains growth upon which the recovery, perhaps even expansion, of local businesses and employment opportunities can take place. As many have pointed out, the easing of restrictions and increased testing brings a possible rise in cases of COVID-19 infections, such as the case in South Korea. More people out and more getting tested will yield more positives. Nonetheless, coping is taking place. In the last two months, testing has been increased from one laboratory to more than 40 new testing centers. As of this writing according to the CSIS data derived from Johns Hopkins, we have surpassed Vietnam and Indonesia in the total number of tests at 332,000. Various local governments and their private sector partners have also augmented their local capacities with isolation centers for quarantine of positive patients that do not need hospitalization. Monitoring the COVID tracker at https://www.doh.gov.ph/covid19tracker gives us an important set of tools to monitor our regions and their ability to cope. Moreover, we now know more about COVID 19, are testing possible treatments, and realize that  majority of infections are not fatal. This calls for a more calibrated approach, like localized quarantine. Fortunately for us, we have a guiding law in Republic Act 11332 enacted in 2018 that enables us to tackle emerging infectious diseases. The declaration of public health emergency stated in Section 7 and other sections guides necessary measures to deal with new diseases. COVID-19 was the first test of how this law was applied.  Doubtless, this law will be tested and implementation refined further as new diseases emerge and responses evaluated. As local capacities increase, the confidence to deal with a surge in COVID 19 or new infections is higher. Bouncing back better Moving forward, bolstering our local economies toward recovery is the challenge of the year. As I have written previously, certain regions will recover faster than others. We hope that the various regions will look at means to bounce back better. Regional level bodies and their private sector counterparts must work together to assess strengths and opportunities coming from the adjustments that are needed. This will create and initiate necessary programs that harness new ways of doing things. One is the growth of the P5.1-billion online economy, that has allowed many local businesses to tap buyers from outside their locales. The emergence of online learning has allowed schools to reach out to a larger international market for students and even trainees. A few schools in the “provinces “ like De La Salle Lipa and Ateneo de Davao have launched online learning platforms and may see a rise in enrollments from various places, no longer limited by space and location. Some government agencies have already engaged online permit application and approval, or at least an appointments and fee payment system to ensure safe transactions. Understanding how these developments affect the local economy will be imperative to determine the quality of growth and the kind of economy that will emerge. This makes the Regional Development Councils an even more important fulcrum of initiatives and efforts to drive programs that create a resilient economy, to attract new, durable investments that harness resources and people. The approval of the CREATE Law, and hopefully the PESA bill ought to serve as an impetus for local incentives and investment promotion efforts at the local level. These will help us bounce back. For reactions: facebook.com/johntriapage