Sharp poverty drop by 2022 vowed

BY 2022, the poverty incidence would be reduced to about 16 percent of the growing population under the Duterte administration’s plan to spread out the benefits of economic growth to the countryside while creating more agricultural and manufacturing jobs to discourage overseas employment.

For incoming Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez, this goal to cut by 1.25-1.5 percentage points per year the poverty rate from about 25 percent at present would be achievable by implementing the “bold and audacious” 10-point socioeconomic agenda, a brainchild of incoming President Rodrigo R. Duterte himself.

Asked if the poverty reduction target was ambitious, Dominguez on Monday noted that the lower rate was already supposed to be the government’s target for 2015 under its commitment to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.

“It’s not ambitious; we’re just achieving what the other guys did not,” Dominguez told a press conference on the sidelines of the consultative workshop between Duterte’s economic managers and the business community dubbed “Sulong Pilipinas: Hakbang Tungo sa Kaunlaran.”

Despite the robust economic growth experienced during the past six years—the highest average gross domestic product (GDP) expansion since the late 1970s — Dominguez said the outgoing Aquino administration was unable to make Filipinos feel the benefit of high growth.

“The high GDP growth rate which was achieved and talked about by the previous administration did not get them reelected, did it? Obviously that’s not what the people want. The people want something else, and that something else they did not do — and it was to reduce the poverty rate,” Dominguez pointed out.

With its plan to significantly slash poverty, the Duterte administration is “listening to the people,” the incoming Finance chief said.

“This is what the people want. They want poverty rates to go down. They want their standard of living to go up. They don’t really care whether the growth rate is 5 percent or 4 percent or 7 percent because what they want is their personal lives are much better,” Dominguez said.

Incoming Economic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia said one measure that will make a lot of difference in terms of reducing poverty is by strictly implementing the Reproductive Health Law, citing a recent study he conducted that showed having fewer children would allow parents to allocate more investments per child.

In his presentation before businessmen, Pernia also cited the need to shift from a consumption-driven economy to an investment- and export-driven one to achieve poverty reducing growth. At present, consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of the economy.

The agriculture and manufacturing sectors should also be supported to create more jobs even for the less skilled members of the labor force, Pernia said, while the share of services to the economic output may have to be reduced even as it is now a huge contributor to economic growth.

Also, Pernia said the incoming administration waned “to make overseas employment an option, not a necessity.”

“We will try to generate more jobs here so the desire to go abroad will be lessened,” the incoming Neda chief said.

Duterte’s 10-point socioeconomic agenda is as follows:

Continuing and maintaining current macroeconomic policies, including fiscal, monetary and trade policies;

Instituting progressive tax reform and more effective tax collection while indexing taxes to inflation, in line with the plan to submit to Congress a tax reform package by September;

Increasing competitiveness and the ease of doing business, drawing upon successful models used to attract business to local cities such as Davao, as well as pursuing the relaxation of the Constitutional restrictions on foreign ownership, except with regards land ownership, in order to attract foreign direct investments;

Accelerating annual infrastructure spending to account for 5 percent of the gross domestic product, with public-private partnerships playing a key role;

Promoting rural and value chain development towards increasing agricultural and rural enterprise productivity and rural tourism;

Ensuring security of land tenure to encourage investments and address bottlenecks in land management and titling agencies;

Investing in human capital development, including health and education systems, as well as matching skills and training to meet the demands of businesses and the private sector;

Promoting science, technology and the creative arts to enhance innovation and creative capacity towards self-sustaining and inclusive development;

Improving social protection programs, including the government’s conditional cash transfer program, in order to protect the poor against instability and economic shocks; and

Strengthening the implementation of the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Law to enable, especially, poor couples to make informed choices on financial and family planning.