Making life worth living
By Ellen Tordesillas
Malaya
By Ellen Tordesillas
Malaya
Not an unusual sight in Metro manila sidewalks and underpasses. Got this photo from Facebook. No credit to photographer.
President Aquino is discrediting the report of his own government agency- National Statistical Coordination Board which says the much-vaunted impressive economic growth has not trickled down to the teeming poor in the country.
The NSDB official release said: “Poverty incidence among population was estimated at 27.9 percent during the first semester of 2012. Comparing this with the 2006 and 2009 first semester figures estimated at 28.8 percent and 28.6 percent, respectively, poverty remained unchanged as the computed differences are not statistically significant.”
In simpler terms, life for the Filipino poor has not improved in the past six years.
Aquino must have been so furious that government figures don’t jibe with the upbeat assessments of global think tanks and rating agencies about Philippine economy posting impressive growth that he bumped off from his Brunei delegation Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Asean Summit in Brunei, Aquino was quoted by ABS-CBN as saying, “May konti akong duda… Hindi ba doon hindi nga ni-report nang tama ‘yung population, ‘yung population na pagkukunan mo ng per capita, paano naging tama ‘yung comparison in ‘09 and ‘12?”
He said he “has reservations over data on ARMM where poverty incidence was found to have worsened. He said that comparing current data with those from the previous administration may not be reliable since some information collected from that region had to be corrected, including its voting population.
He also said that results of government’s health and education programs for the poor, as well as the conditional cash transfer program, should be looked at.
ABS-CBN also said Aquino cited government’s “intervention” in agriculture that helped reduce the price of milkfish (bangus) compared to galunggong.
Aquino disputing publicly government statistics makes us recall the reaction of Gloria Arroyo in June 2006 when her education secretary, Fe Hidalgo, reported that there was a classroom shortage of 6,132 rooms.
She berated Hidalgo in a cabinet meeting where she was doing the presentation. She reminded Hidalgo of her instruction not to use the ratio of 1 classroom to 45 pupils, which was the ideal situation conducive to learning but to use 100 to 1 ratio because they increased the class size to 50 and since there are two shifts in one day, 100 students use one classroom.
A humiliated Hidalgo went back to the Department of Education, did some dagdag-bawas, and came back to Malacañang with a glowing report that there was no more classroom shortage.
We are wondering what Balisacan is going to do when Aquino comes back. Is he going to revise his poverty statistics?”
Anyhow, on the record, here are excerpts from the press release of the NSCB on poverty incidence in the country:
“During the first semester of 2012, a Filipino family of five needed PhP 5,458 to meet basic food needs every month and Php 7,821 to stay above the poverty threshold (basic food and non-food needs) every month. These respective amounts represent the food and poverty thresholds, which increased by 11.1 percent from the first semester of 2009 to the first half of 2012, compared to the 26.0 percent-increase between the 1st semesters of 2006 and 2009.
“The food threshold is the minimum income required by an individual to meet his/her basic food needs and satisfy the nutritional requirements set by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI), while remaining economically and socially productive. Put another way, the food threshold helps measure food poverty or “subsistence,” which may also be described as extreme poverty.
“The subsistence incidence, which represents the proportion of Filipino families in extreme poverty, was estimated at 10.0 percent during the first semester of 2012. At 10.0 percent in the first semester of 2009 and 10.8 percent in the first half of 2006, the differences among these three figures remain statistically insignificant.
“In terms of poverty incidence among families, the NSCB estimates a rate of 22.3 percent during the first semester of 2012, and 23.4 percent and 22.9 percent during the same periods in 2006 and 2009, respectively.”
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