MANILA, Philippines – There have literally been dozens of studies on Philippine poverty over the last decade or so, by economists in Philippine universities, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and other international agencies. The latest one is entitled "Examining recent trends in poverty, inequality, and vulnerability" written by Dr. Jose Ramon Albert and Mr. Andre Philippe Ramos of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) which has produced over the years some very useful policy-oriented studies that can guide decision making in both the government and the private sector. The conclusion of the study is not a very happy one.
As based on statistics released by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) for 2000, 2003, and 2006, poverty in the Philippines is seen not to have substantially changed since the start of the millennium. Although there was a reduction of the proportion of the population who were considered poor from 33.6 percent in 2000 to 30 percent in 2003, the poverty rate in 2006 increased to practically where it was at the beginning of the millennium at 32.9 percent. Poverty has remained mostly unchanged and has also continued to be a predominantly rural phenomenon, with three out of every four persons found in the rural areas. The outlook looks even bleaker if the Philippine economy continues to grow at the same pace as it did in the last decade or so. It will take more than 17 years for half of the poor to exit poverty even if the per capita incomes of all persons in the country were to increase uniformly by 2 percent annually (adjusted for inflation). It will take an average time of 40 years for the poor to exit poverty if annual growth per capita is at 1 percent.
It is quite evident from these projections that the Philippine economy must grow at 7 percent or more annually for the next ten or more years for there to be a significant reduction in poverty. A 7 percent growth in GDP would mean about 5 percent annual growth in per capita income since population growth is a little under 2 percent per annum. The experiences of the East Asian countries over the last twenty years (especially China) is that a growth of at least 7 percent in GDP annually for 20 years or more can make a significant dent on mass poverty. The Philippines has not attained this sustained growth of 7 percent or more over the last two decades mainly because of flawed economic policies based on import-substitution industrialization and an utter neglect of countryside and agricultural development. We can be optimistic that the 7 percent or more growth is attainable in the next decade or so because lessons have been learned from the past errors. Today, there is greater emphasis on export-oriented industrialization and more importantly, there is keener focus on rural and agricultural development. A greater portion of the capital budget of the Government is being spent on farm-to-market roads, irrigation systems, and post-harvest facilities. No longer is agriculture considered as the Cinderella of development.
The study of Dr. Albert and Mr. Ramos also showed that in the rural areas, those at the lower and middle portions of the income distribution benefited less from growth during the period studied than those at the upper end of the distribution. They found out that while inequality went down as a whole for the country and urban areas for the period 2000 to 2006, the rural areas suffered from increased inequality largely brought about by differences in the top of the income distribution ladder. In view of these changes in income distribution, headcount poverty in the country decreased only by 0.7 percent. Had there been no worsening of the inequality seen in the rural areas where the upper-income groups were the ones who benefited more from growth, headcount poverty would have fallen from 33.6 percent to 22.6 percent.
The very modest gains in the fight against poverty can be attributed to improper targeting mechanisms for propoor projects and the absence of monitoring and evaluation systems for program implementation. The authors recommended that propoor public interventions that do not seem to have an impact should be reoriented, especially those with implementation and targeting issues. Policies and programs oriented toward the prevention of the transmission of poverty from one generation to the next, "especially by way of human resource investments and population management" must be essential components of any sustainable reduction strategy of poverty and vulnerability.
The authors have something positive to say about the controversial program of the present Administration of conditional cash transfers to the poorest of the poor. They opine that a conditional cash transfer program, if well executed and monitored, shows promise. Improving nonfarm income in rural areas must also be a policy thrust. My view is that these nonfarm incomes can come from tourism, transport and telecom, processed food products, housing and construction, garments and clothing accessories and other small and medium-scale enterprises that can be located in the rural areas once road and telecom networks are improved. The Philippine nautical highway is a real asset for the mobilization of non-farm rural employment. The Report concludes that sustained economic growth can dramatically reduce poverty (which would mean at least 7% annual GDP growth for the next twenty years) but this entails a serious management of resources, "including population management."
If by population management, the authors mean a drastic redistribution of the 93 million people in the Philippines away from monstrous urban areas like Metro Manila to the sparsely populated regions such as Isabela, Cagayan, Aurora, Quezon, Bicol, Leyte, Samar and numerous other rural areas, then they are right. With improved rural infrastructures such as farm-to-market roads, domestic seaports and airports, telecom facilities and educational institutions, this more efficient distribution of population will go a long way to reducing poverty in the rural areas. But if they mean reducing family sizes, the authors are contradicting themselves. They repeat over and over again that poverty is predominantly a rural phenomenon and is concentrated in the households of small farmers who are poor because they have been deprived by the State of the support infrastructures they need to earn decent incomes. They have to draw water from the rivers, plow their fields with the most primitive methods, bring their goods to the market using roads in the most horrible state of disrepair, etc. How can you tell these rural families to have only two children? The only resources they have precisely are their children, who many times are asked to leave school at an early age because they are needed for farm work. Until the rural infrastructures are significantly improved, these rural families would need and want to have many children.
Even in countries like Thailand, the big reduction in family size in the rural areas was mainly due to the farmers getting richer through a thorough-going program of agricultural and countryside development that was made possible by more efficient infrastructures. An aggressive population control program only served to so drastically reduced fertility that it went down much below the desirable replacement level. Today, Thailand is suffering from the unenviable reputation as the first country in the history of humanity to grow old before becoming rich. A further collateral damage is the highest figure of HIV-AIDS patients in East Asia, more than a million of them. The explosion of HIV-AIDS cases was a result of sexual promiscuity that was induced by the spreading of condoms far and wide even among adolescents and unmarried people. This goes to show that condoms do not prevent the spread of sexual diseases. Let us therefore limit the meaning of population management to an intelligent redistribution of population within the 300,000 square kilometers that the Philippine Archipelago offers. For comments, my email address is bvillegas@uap.edu.ph
No comments:
Post a Comment