An erroneous television report spurred hate against the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda), which supposedly claimed that P10,000 is enough to sustain the needs of a family of five for a month.
But Neda never said anything like that, the country’s chief economist reiterated on Friday.
“I understand and regret that there are those who were dismayed by the budget figures presented in a press conference last June 5. Allow me to point out that there was no mention of a decent budget for a family,” Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia, who heads Neda, said in a statement.
Mere ‘example’
Pernia was referring to the economic team’s announcement of an inflation rate of 4.6 percent in May, a five-year high.
He said Undersecretary Rosemarie Edillon merely used P10,000 as “an example” to illustrate the impact of the inflation rate on a family’s budget.
“The practicality of the P10,000 sample budget is that it is easy to multiply by any number [such as 2x, 3x, … 10x] depending on the actual budget of a family,” Pernia explained.
An online report by GMA-7, titled “Can a family of 5 survive on P10,000 a month? Neda shows how,” went viral on social media under #NEDA10kchallenge and claimed that Neda said that “P10,000 a month is enough for a family of five to live in a month.”
Citing a report on primetime news program “24 Oras,” GMA’s online story said that “a sample household budget from Neda showed that P3,834 is enough to feed the same family of five for 30 days.”
‘Enough, decent’
But Pernia said that neither Edillon nor Neda said that the amount allocated for food was “enough” or “decent.”
A check with the TV report showed neither sound bite nor a direct quote from Edillon that said so, he said. Nonetheless, he pointed out that “the figure cited was only a sample budget.”
“This is not to disregard the reality that many Filipinos work tirelessly to provide for their families,” Pernia said.
Neda explained last Wednesday that the P10,000 hypothetical budget was “broken down into items commonly consumed by a Filipino household based on the consumer price index weights published by the Philippine Statistics Authority.”