Inter-state Travel Ban Impacts the Economy

 

The continued ban on both interstate and international travel means that a fast economic recovery will certainly be delayed, say Carmelo Ferlito from the Center for Market Education (FMT, 12 April 2021).

The Government’s move to restrict movements and certain economic activities, as well as holding off from convening Parliament, was an overreaction to the Covid-19 situation. In setting policies, the Government should be looking at the country’s very low fatality rate of 0.37% rather than the number of cases.

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 “In Malaysia, the survival rate if you get Covid-19 is 99.6%. This is a lot higher than a lot of other illnesses. “In fact, Malaysia’s death rate from Covid-19 – the proportion of cases that prove fatal – ranks among the lowest compared to regional neighbours and other countries with similar population size, and is far better than the global average of 2.02%.”

Ferlito said measures from lockdowns to continued travel restrictions are greatly damaging the economy and that the consequences such as higher debt, inflation, and so on have largely been left out of the conversation.

 “Clearly the risks outweigh the benefits but the government does not speak about this. So there is a great contradiction,” he said, adding the reality was there were no “zero-risk” situations in life, be it vaccines or the economy.

“If you want to look at the real costs of the restriction on jobs, just look at the data on the number of people who started doing Grab, Foodpanda, and other gig-economy jobs. Then you would know how many people more would be jobless if these jobs didn’t exist.”

 “Children can go to school, people can go and watch football games, but we are not allowing people to travel. So areas outside of the Klang Valley and other big cities especially are going to suffer more than others, the tourism and retail sector is going to continue to suffer.

“What is the logic in allowing a mall in Selangor to be packed but not allowing people to travel to Melaka for a holiday?”

Excessive caution impacts the economy. Many hotels, retailers and businesses suffer because inter-state travel is not allowed. If the SOP is being followed, pray why then do we restrict travel and domestic tourism? Couldn’t we be more imaginative?

With vaccines being rolled-out it is time for the Government to relax inter-state travel, at least for now.

 

Reference:

Travel ban crush hopes of quick recovery, say think tank, Robin Augustin and Imran Ariff,

(https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com), April 12, 2021