Dear President Marcos,
Please consider launching a national initiative in 2025 that will address urgent needs for our economic development, one that uses our national school feeding program as its catalyst. Through this, we will save jobs that are now threatened. It will also prepare our people for more jobs in our increasingly competitive global environment.
Situation
Unless action is taken immediately, our educational advantage will soon disappear. The United Nations World Food Program reported: “Nine out of 10 children in the Philippines aged 10 years old are unable to read and understand the age-appropriated text. The national learning poverty rate in the Philippines (91 percent) is much higher than for East Asia and the Pacific (35 percent).” Also, our own Congressional Budget Policy and Research Department reported: “Our indicator of the country’s state of basic education is our performance in the Program for International Student Assessment. This showed the dismal bottom ranking of the Philippines—78/78 in 2018 and 77/81 in 2022.” This covered 15-year-olds in mathematics, science and reading. Our deteriorating educational achievement forecasts our inability to produce the future work required for economic development here and abroad.
Threats
In international trade, the sad state of our education jeopardizes two important sectors, which provide export earnings and which constitute 16 percent of our gross domestic product. Today, they are necessary for our economic survival. The first sector is our overseas Filipino workers. Last year, they contributed $33.5 billion in overseas remittances. Unless we move quickly, they will be replaced by workers from other countries, with their educational attainment improving while ours deteriorating. The second sector is business process outsourcing (BPO). It contributed $35.5 billion during the same period. At present, artificial intelligence (AI) threatens its growth. An International Monetary Fund report released last month stated: “In the Philippines, BPO will probably shrink as AI adoption ramps up …. AI is seen to affect 14 percent of the workforce, which could lead to job displacement in certain sectors such as customer service.” This deterioration in the quality of our workforce will not only decrease export revenues but, more importantly, replace our domestic production with imports from countries where there is better educational preparation.
The proposed national initiative is to make our school feeding program the catalyst for our economic development. Given our difficult nutrition situation, AI Overview states: “Poor access to health food leads to poor cognitive function and an inability to retain new information.” Our feeding program should not only measure nutrition with indicators such as improvement in height and weight. It should also focus on academic achievement with global test scores.
In addition, it should use a circular economy approach. The food provided should come from the community and not from imports or faraway sources. Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto made the feeding program a key campaign promise. He said that it would create 25 million jobs by sourcing food from their respective communities.
For us in the Philippines, our feeding program as an economic development catalyst will have multidimensional results, such as: 1) improving nutrition; (2) increasing academic achievement; (3) producing a better-qualified workforce; (4) creating jobs by sourcing food from the community; and (5) spurring economic activities such as extension services in production, processing and marketing using economies of scale.
Support
This initiative will need additional funds provided by grants and long-term loans from foreign governments and international institutions. This is justified because the World Bank stated: “For every dollar invested in addressing malnutrition, a return of $23 is expected. The economic benefits of nutrition far outweigh the costs of inaction.” We need this national initiative led by no less than the President. It will require decisive, united action from local government units, departments such as those of education, agriculture and trade and industry, as well as private sector partners. Mr. President, please consider launching this national initiative in 2025. We believe it will be a critical positive turning point in our country’s destiny.
Ernesto M. Ordoñez
National Coordinator
Agrifisheries Alliance