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I Thut dan Marcht4,?.otg
'Govt to miss poverty reduction
target due to budget impasse'
-
ByCAr U. ORDTNARIo
HE Duterte administration
I can say goodbye to its goal
I of bringing down poverty f
incidence to L4 percent by 2022 if
the House of Representatives and the
Senate will not be able to resolve the
impasse on the 2019 budget.
Socioeconomic Planning Sec-
retary Elnesto M. Pernia said on
Wednesday that the reenactment
of the budget will have "serious
irnplications" on job creation and
poverty reduction, especially if the
reenactment of thebudget happens
for the entire year.
t @caiordi a o
"Given our high poverty inci-
dence, we are not going to be helped
in terms of reducing ourhigh pover-
ty rate with this reenacted budget,"
Pernia told reporters in an interview,
"Ifit freenactedbudget] is the whole
year, surely it will not help."
Based on the 2015 poverty
o
faqe -Aq "
estimates, the country's PovertY
incidence was at 21.6 Percent,3.6
percentage points lower than the
25.2 percent recorded in 2012.
This translates to as much as
21.927 million poor Filipinos in
2015, or a reduction of 1.819 mil-
lion from 23.746 million in 2012.
The reenacted budget could
make the country's goals oflifting
millions fro.m poverty even more
difficult considering that poverty
incidence likely went uP in 2018
The poverty data is based on
the Family Income and ExPendi-
ture Survey (FIES) conductedevery
three years,
In 2018 the Philippine Statistics
Authority (PSA) conauctedthe sur-
vey and the first semester results
will be released before June.
Some economists fear that the
picture may not be as rosy given
the high commodity prices seen in
2018. The increase in the Price of
rice was a key factor that caused
inflation to accelerate.
UP School of Statistics Dean
Dennis Mapa said food inflation,
especially for the poorest 30 Per-
cent, reached T.l percent last year.
This could worsen povertt es-
pecially among farmers and fish-
ermen who are considered among
the near-poor.
Reducing the country's pover-
ty rate to 14 percett by 2022 is a
crucial step to meeting the Philip-
pines's commitment under the Sus-
tainable DevelopmentGoals (SDGs)
to eradicate poverty bY 2030.
The goal of the SDGs is to end
poverty in all its forms. The first
target under this goal is to eradi-
cate extreme poverty for allpeople
everywhere, currentlymeasuredas
people living on less than $1.25 a
day by 2030.