Palace admits increase in hunger incidence

MANILA, Philippines – Malacañang admitted yesterday that hunger incidence has increased since President Arroyo assumed power in 2001, but said this could be the “only major sore spot in a sea of good news about the President’s economic legacy.”

Deputy presidential spokesman Gary Olivar said that self-rated poverty, which has some correlation with hunger incidence, has actually gone down during the Arroyo administration from previous administrations, as indicated in surveys conducted by the Social Weather Stations.

Olivar was reacting to the statement made by the President’s economic adviser Albay Gov. Joey Salceda that in spite of the continuous economic growth being experienced by the country, more Filipinos are hungry.

Salceda said that hunger incidence went up from 11.4 percent in 2000 to 20.3 percent last year.

Olivar said that self-rated poverty has gone down from nearly 74 percent of households by the end of the Marcos administration to 46 percent as of last quarter 2009.

“The improvement in self-rated poverty parallels the improvement as well in official poverty incidence over the same period, as tracked by NSCB (National Statistical Coordination Board),” Olivar said.

“This data are also available to the President’s economic adviser Gov. Joey Salceda, whose comments about poverty and hunger, perhaps the only major source (of bad news) in a sea of good news of the President’s economic legacy, were understandably picked up with great eagerness by certain of our broadsheets,” he added.

Olivar argued that it is possible and sometimes even inevitable to have more growth and more income inequity.

Olivar that with income inequity comes hunger incidence and this would have been worse had the economy gone into recession last year or grew at a slower pace.

He said that addressing hunger is not the sole responsibility of the government but also the private sector, particularly big business.

Citing the same data that was presented by Salceda, Olivar noted that out of the P3.1 trillion in net profits earned by the country’s top 1,000 companies from 1996 to 2008, only two-thirds were paid out as dividends and only one-third was reinvested.

“This leads us to ask, how much of those dividends found their way to the charity of the privately wealthy into the lives of the needy and hungry among us? Or more to the point, if more than just 1/3 of corporate profits had been reinvested, how much more could businesses have expanded, more jobs been created and the productivity and incomes of labor been improved?” he said.   –-Marvin Sy (The Philippine Star) with Jose Rodel Clapano