More Pinoys to end up in poverty

MORE Filipinos were expected to fall into poverty in 2009 because of recent shocks that hit the country, according to the government’s think tank. Celia Reyes, research fellow of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), said that it is likely that poverty incidence among the population will rise more than 32.9 percent in 2009 because of the domestic and global challenges that struck the country.

For 2006, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) reported 32.9 percent of the population or 27.6 million Filipinos are income poor while 14.6 percent, or 12.2 million Filipinos are food poor.

“Because of the recent shocks, poverty would tend to go up. That’s what I’m seeing, but we are still waiting for the official statistics,” Reyes said.

She was referring to shocks such as higher food and fuel prices, the global financial crisis and natural calamities.

Reyes said that food prices increased in 2008 by 13.6 percent, higher than the food inflation rate of 3.3 percent in 2007.

Meanwhile, fuel prices went up significantly by 17 percent in 2008 from 3.3 percent in 2007.

“While prices of rice and fuel products have gone down from their peak in 2008, the prices have not gone down to pre-shock level,” Reyes said.

According to her, Filipinos affected by the global financial crisis would definitely experience poverty.

She said that the devastating typhoons Milenyo and Reming in 2006, Frank in 2008 and Ondoy and Pepeng in 2009 are likely to worsen poverty in the country.

Reyes added that the government should be worried about the rising number of chronic poor in the country.

The PIDS researcher estimated that 17.3 percent of Filipinos are chronic poor, while 13.3 percent were transient poor.

Chronic poor refers to Filipinos who were consistently poor during 2003 to 2006.

Cleofe Pastrana, the director of the National Economic and Development Authority’s (NEDA) Social Development Staff, said that lower economic growth and greater poverty as a result of the crisis will lead to slower progress toward attaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by United Nations member-countries.

“Effects of the economic downturn on government revenues have important implications for the ability of the government to meet the financing requirements for the MDGs,” Pastrana noted.

She said that the country has slow progress in meeting the target to improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS and eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education.

NEDA earlier admitted that the country’s recent economic growth hardly changed the average income of Filipinos.

“With annual population growth rate estimated at 2.04 percent, per capita income growth among Filipinos was only 2.8 percent, on the average. As of 2006, poverty incidence stood at 26.9 percent, or 4.68 million families,” it said.

From 2005 to 2008, according to NEDA, the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an annual average rate of 5.5 percent.

GDP represents the total amount of goods and services produced locally in a year. DARWIN G. AMOJELAR, Manila Times