Aquino committed to addressing hunger and poverty–Palace

Malacañang on Tuesday said the Aquino administration continues to address poverty incidence in the country as shown in the decline in the number of families who experienced hunger in 2012.

“The Aquino administration remains committed to addressing hunger as a result of poverty,” said Palace Deputy Spokesman Abigail Valte in a statement.

Valte said through social interventions such as the Conditional Cash-Transfer program, which puts a premium on purchasing food for family-beneficiaries and supplemental feeding programs of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, “the government continues to expand and enhance efforts to uplift living conditions for our countrymen.”

“These initiatives both mitigate and lay the foundations to help families rise above poverty and better their lives,” she added.

According to the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey, around 16.3 percent of respondents, or extrapolated to about 3.3 million families, claimed to have gone hungry in the last three months of 2012.

This was down from the 21 percent—about 4.3 million households—that claimed in August to have gone hungry in the past three months, it said.

The SWS said the hunger rate in December fell to a one-and-a-half year low—the lowest hunger figure since 15.1 percent (or 3 million families) in June 2011, and was a far cry from the high 23.8 percent (4.8 million families) in March 2012.

The SWS attributed this to a better score for moderate hunger, or having had nothing to eat “only once” or “a few times” in the last three months of last year.

However, it also noted severe hunger, defined as “often” or “always” going hungry, marginally rose.

“Compared to their 14-year averages, the new moderate hunger rate is now lower in Balance Luzon, equal in the Visayas, but still higher in Metro Manila and Mindanao,” the SWS said. –Lilybeth G. Ison / Philippines News Agency