B R I E F I N G P A

In 2020, The Asia Foundation conducted a rapid • Despite directives of a price freeze on goods, the prices of assessment of the impact of COVID-19 movement staples such as noodles and rice increased during the early and health protocols on informal cross-border trade stages of the pandemic. [...] The passage of these shipments into the southern Philippines often requires the payment of kotong, a local term for the rents or other ‘special arrangements’ commonly charged by some state agents and others to facilitate the transport of goods.2 In 2020, even with formal movement restrictions enacted by both the Philippine and foreign governments to stem the spread of COVID-19, local barter trader. [...] The study details the resilience of barter trading in the region, exploring the methods through which traders have sought to cope with the local and regional challenges created by the global pandemic. [...] ECONOMIC IMPACT OF COVID-19 THE PERVASIVE PRACTICE OF KOTONG & RESTRICTIONS The opaque nature of the pricing structure complicates efforts to parse out how much the COVID-19 pandemic While barter trade continued throughout 2020, the directly contributed to increased prices in the barter Sulu archipelago has been hit by a number of economic trade—from traders all the way down to wholesalers and imp. [...] At the start of the pandemic the IATF assigned the majority of enforcement duties during the ECQ and GCQ to “uniformed However, access to other government benefits remained personnel”—the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) or limited.