MORE Filipinos slipped to poverty last year but this “temporary setback” could be reversed soon this year. Or so the government believes.
The assurance came today, March 12, from the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) that acknowledged that increase in poverty incidence in the country by 1.2 percentage points in the first semester of 2014.
By NAPC’s data in 2013, 1 in 4 Filipinos or 24.9 percent or 1 in 4 live in poverty. In terms of number of families, poverty incidence is placed at 19.1 percent or 19 out of every 100 Filipino families, roughly equivalent to 24.3 million Filipinos.
Poverty Incidence refers to the count of poor individuals/families; those whose income fall below the poverty threshold, which in turn refers to the required minimum income/expenditure to meet the basic food & non-food requirements.
The national benchmark is that a family of five should earn at least P8,022 a month to be considered non-poor.
Of the total number of poor Filipinos in 2013, however, at least 10.7 percent or 11 in 100 citizens endure extreme poverty or could not meet basic food requirements. This figure, NAPC said, is 2 percent than the 2012 poverty statistics. NAPC said “around 2.5 million Filipinos were lifted out of poverty from 2012.”
The ‘”food threshold” income of P5,590 monthly is what a family of five needs to “meet the basic food needs that will satisfy the nutritional requirements for economically necessary and socially desirable physical activities.”
According to NAPC, the uptick in the proportion of poor Filipinos in 2014 “was not enough to negate the 3.3 percent reduction recorded in the same period in 2013.”
NAPC, in a press statement, said it hopes that in time, poverty incidence would dip again. The 2.3 percent reduction in 2013 “and other relevant factors will probably push poverty incidence for 2015 back toward a declining trajectory,” it said.
Poverty incidence refers to the count of individuals whose income fall below the poverty threshold, which in turn refers to the minimum income to meet the basic food and non-food necessities.
NAPC noted that recent monthly data showed that the inflation rate in February 2015 was a moderate 2.5 percent, similar to the food inflation rate in the first half of 2013.
“The price of rice in particular, an indicator of food inflation, has also stabilized at a 2.7 percent rate. This is not as steep a rise in the price of the commodity as 2014,” NAPC said. “If increases in food prices remain as they are and if the average income of the poor continue to grow on pace with 2013 and 2014, we will be seeing poverty on the decline once again.”
A different situation occurred in 2014, it said, “when high food prices and the after-effects of super typhoon Yolanda caused the reversal in poverty incidence last year.”
NAPC explained: “During the first six months of 2014, food prices spiked to 6.6 percent while non-food prices went up to 2.7 percent. This very high food inflation resulted in a higher poverty threshold of 9.4 percent or P10,534, and a food threshold of 9.5 percent or P7,350, more than three times the level in 2013.”
Interestingly, according to NAPC. “over the same period, the average income of the poor actually rose to 9.4 percent, which is the main reason why the subsistence incidence, or the number of poor Filipinos whose income was not enough to buy the minimum food requirements, remained flat at 10.5 percent for 2013 and 2014.”
But “had the income of the poor increased by a lesser rate, then the impact of food inflation on poverty would have been greater, setting the country’s poverty incidence back to the 2012 level.”
In NAPC’s view, “the increase in poverty incidence, therefore, can be traced to an increase in the number of the non-food poor, those who can afford to buy the minimum food requirements but cannot afford other basic necessities like health and education.”
In short, NAPC said, the additional number of the poor counted in 2014 could have been non-poor earlier. “From the data, we can say that some of those who became poor in the first half of 2014 were originally non-poor but are nonetheless vulnerable to shocks caused by calamities and price increase of food, what with their incomes only slightly higher than the poverty threshold.”
It is NAPC’s prognosis that “the increase in poverty incidence in the first half of 2014 is a temporary setback that can be reversed next year given a continuation of present conditions.”
NAPC was established in 1997 “to serve as the coordinating and advisory body for the implementation of the social reform and poverty alleviation agenda.”
A small and poorly funded agency under the Office of the President, in law NAPC is supposed to perform myriad functions, including:
• Coordinate with different national and local government agencies and the private sector to assure full implementation of all social reform and poverty alleviation programs;
• Coordinate with local government units in the formulation of social reform and poverty alleviation program for their respective areas in conformity with the National Anti-Poverty Action Agenda;
• Recommend policy and other measures to ensure the responsive implementation of the commitments under the SRA;
• Ensure meaningful representation and active participation of the bank sectors;
• Oversee, monitor and recommend measures to ensure the effective formulation, implementation and evaluation of policies, programs and resource allocations and management of social reform and poverty alleviation program;
• Advocate for the mobilization of funds by the national and local governments to finance social reform and poverty alleviation programs and capability building activities of people’s organizations;
• Provide financial and non-financial incentives to local government units with counterpart resources for the implementation of social reform and poverty alleviation programs; and
• Submit an annual report to Congress including, but not limited to, all aspects of its operations of programs and project implementation, financial status ad other relevant data as reflected by the basic reform indicators. - PCIJ, March 2015