IDEAS welcomes progress in combatting COVID-19 and encourages the government to develop an exit strategy for the eventual end to the Movement Control Order (MCO). In our latest paper written by IDEAS Senior Fellow, Carmelo Ferlito and and Gaetano Perone, Research Fellow at the Department of Management, Economics and Quantitative Methods of the University of Bergamo in Bergamo, Italy, we’ve proposed several steps.

In the short run, we must bring the economy back on-line as quickly as possible, prioritising networked industries. Specific recommendations include:

1. To include logistics as among the essential services
2. Provide rapid feedback from MITI for the industry-related firms.

In the medium-run develop protocols for lower restrictions under strict sanitary conditions. Specific recommendations include a gradual relaxation of MCO under strict sanitary conditions (including mass testing), as recently proposed by Dato’ Seri Azmin Ali.

In the medium and long-run the government should accelerate adaptation by firms, to cope with prolonged disruptions. Specific recommendations include fiscal incentives to automation, to reduce dependence on a large labour force.