PRESIDENT Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has formed a Private Sector Advisory Council (PSAC) composed of businessmen in order to address their problems amid the prevailing coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic, Go Negosyo founder Joey Concepcion said on Friday, July 8, 2022.Concepcion said he will be in charge of the jobs, including the micro, small and medium enterprises of the council, which is headed by Aboitiz Equity Ventures president and chief executive officer Sabin Aboitiz.”Malaking bagay yan that the President really wants to be attuned to yung mga problema ng mga negosyante ngayon at practical issues at hand, especially ‘yung areas of agriculture, where he is the acting secretary as well,” he said in a Laging handa public briefing.“We want to make sure that the economy will continue to move, accelerate. Our growth rates cannot stall and for us to be able to do this, there cannot be lockdowns anymore. So we have to ensure as private sectors that we do our part,” he added.In a Twitter post on Thursday, July 7, Marcos expressed gratitude to the members of the council following a meeting where he said they exchanged ideas about scaling up the agricultural sector.Marcos is the concurrent secretary of the agriculture department in a bid to strengthen the country’s food security amid the looming food crisis.“It is refreshing to hear ideas from them and I’m excited to establish programs with the cooperation of the private sector to help our farmers,” he said.Concepcion said initially, the council, which also includes medical experts, recommended the shift to a color-coded quarantine classification and ditch the Alert Level System to make it easier for the public to understand.He said their recommendations were science-based and were keenly studied by experts.Concepcion likened the scheme to traffic lights where green means go, orange means careful or “be vigilant,” while red means stop.The traffic light approach is based on the average daily attack rate of the areas and health utilization rate.Earlier, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said Marcos instructed the DOH to further review and study the prevailing alert level system, which identifies the quarantine restriction in an area. (SunStar Philippines)