A Philippine National Situationer on the COVID-19 Pandemic 15 Table 2 Summary of government social amelioration measures (continued) Program Expanded and Enhanced Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) Implementing agency DSWD, DOLE Brief description Provision of assistance in cash or noncash to families who have no incomes or savings to draw from, including families working in the informal economy and those who are not currently recipients of 4Ps COVID-19 P3 ERF DTI Provision of loans for micro, small, and medium enterprises amounting from Php 10,000 to Php 50,000 for small enterprises with asset size of not more than Php 10 million Cash Assistance for Rice Farmers DA A one-time provision of decoupled payments amounting to Php 5,000 to eligible rice farmer beneficiaries Survival and Recovery (SURE) Assistance for Marginalized, Small Farmers and Fishers DA A Php 25,000 interest-free loan assistance for farmers and fisherfolks Livelihood Seeding Prgram/ Negosyo Serbisyo sa Barangay (LSP-NSB) DTI Php 200 million fund assistance for micro-entrepreneurs in the form of enterprise development training and/or the provision of a livelihood kit amounting to at least Php 5,000 but no more than Php 8,000 domestic product (GDP). This is the first contraction of the Philippine economy since the fourth quarter of 1998 (PSA 2020b). Nevertheless, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the government projected that the economy would still grow by four percent, while some economists disagreed, saying that it may even be as low as negative ten percent (Lim 2020). On August 6, 2020, however, the PSA released its second quarter report showing that the economy contracted by 16.5 percent, the biggest quarterly drop since 1981, placing the country technically under a recession (PSA 2020c). Many businesses have also either shut down, halted operations, or adopted scaleddown alternative work arrangements. Surveys in April by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) and the Department of Finance (DOF) showed that the majority of the economic sectors had no operations while almost all the