RP lagging in poverty fight -ADB

MANILA – Despite Malacanang’s claim that the Philippines is winning the war on poverty, the Asian Development Bank says in its recent study Manila is lagging behind other South Asian countries in reducing poverty.
It said the Philippines was behind Indonesia and Vietnam which have been relatively successful in reducing poverty at an average of two and four percentage points a year, respectively. The ADB report proposed a new way of measuring poverty in the region and said the poverty line should be redrawn above the proportion of the population living at less than $1.35 a day, instead of the old $1 a day benchmark of the World Bank.
Using this yardstick, there are 20.75 million-25.4 million poor people in the Philippines, or 24.1%-29.5% of the population, depending on which indicators, like prices of goods, are used.

Under $1 a day, only 13.6% of the country’s population would be considered poor. The World Bank itself has moved up its international poverty line to $1.25 a day and said there were more poor people in the developing world than previously thought; for instance because the cost of living in poor countries had been underestimated.

At the same time, however, it concluded that developing countries have been generally successful in reducing poverty.

The World Bank said 1.4 billion people were living below its new poverty line, from a little less than a billion using the old $1 threshold.

At $1.35 a day, the ADB said there were 843 million poor people in 16 countries it had studied using new statistical methods, instead of a billion.

The ADB study, part of its yearly Key Indicators publication, showed that poverty came down to 29.5% of the Philippine population in 2006 from nearly 36% in 1994, a reduction of six percentage points or about half a percentage point a year.

This pales in comparison to Vietnam, which reduced poverty at an average of four percentage points a year, or Indonesia at nearly two points.

As a result, there are more poor people in the Philippines than in Vietnam, where the head-count is at least 13.4 million.

In Vietnam, only 16% of the population can be considered poor, significantly down from more than 60% 15 years ago.

India was slightly better than the Philippines at seven-tenths of a point in average annual reduction.

Among 13 countries compared, the Philippines had the same pace as Sri Lanka, and was better than Pakistan, Mongolia, and Bangladesh, where poverty even worsened.

Data show lower poverty reduction rates for the more affluent Thailand and Malaysia, but the ADB said this was misleading since poverty in both countries had been driven down to zero.

Domingo F. Panganiban, National Anti Poverty Commission lead convenor, said poverty reduction in the Philippines has been slower compared to its neighbors due to natural calamities, the lack of focus among local governments’ anti-poverty programs, and the unstable security situation in Mindanao, home to many of the country’s poorest provinces.

“We are bothered by typhoons which affect the vulnerable sectors like the fisher folk. These contribute to the problem of poverty,” he said.

The anti-poverty chief said the Mindanao conflict, which has displaced tens of thousands of people, was also disrupting the government’s efforts.

The government has been giving out conditional cash transfers and providing skills training to ease poverty, Mr. Panganiban said.

The official Philippine poverty estimates were actually higher, at a third of the population in 2006, or 27.6 million or 4.7 million families, even with a lower threshold. This was an increase from 25.4
million individuals or 4.1 million families in 2000.

Based on the Family Income and Expenditure Survey conducted every three years, an individual needed to earn P15,057 annually to stay out of poverty, equivalent to P41.25 or less than $1 a day.

The latest Social Weather Stations survey, meanwhile, said 10.6 million Filipino families considered themselves poor.

Sought for comment, University of the Philippines economist Solita C. Monsod said the country was doing an “awful” job at reducing poverty, citing the estimates of fellow UP economist Arsenio M. Balisacan, who found that poverty worsened between 1997 and 2006 with even lower thresholds.

The UP estimates pegged the number of poor people at 26.9% of the population in 2006, from about a quarter in 1997.

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