More than 3M Filipinos out of extreme poverty by end of 2007: commission

from The Sun Star

THE National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) on Tuesday called as “misleading and outdated” a newspaper report that cited a World Bank (WB) study which said that 15 million Filipinos live on one dollar a day.

The NAPC, in a statement, said “last year, in fact, the World Bank, in a publication entitled East Asia Update: Managing Through a Global Downturn estimated that 13.5 percent of or 10.5 million Filipinos had incomes lower than US$1 dollar a day in 2000 and estimated that extreme poverty in the country will fall below 10 percent for the first time in 2006, down by half from the 1990 level. It is forecasted to fall further to 8.4 percent by the end of 2007, a decline of more than 3 million people lifted out of extreme poverty in the Arroyo administration.”

“Thus, the figures referred to by Philippine Daily Inquirer might be those of 1990 figures since the same publication reports such estimate (19.1 percent) for the same period. What is grossly misleading about this article is that to the lay person, this may seem to imply that 19 percent of Filipinos in 2000 had incomes less than around 50 pesos,” the NAPC also said.

Moreover, in terms of two-dollar-a-day (PPP) poverty rates, the NAPC said the newspaper mentioned that 47.2 percent of or 36million Filipinos were poor in 2000 and forecasts a level of 39.3 percent (33.4 million Filipinos) by the end of 2006.

Aside from providing outdated data, the NAPC said the article may further mislead the public into thinking that the poverty thresholds used by the (WB) are in US dollar terms. International organizations such as the WB and the UN use the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) dollar as their value and not the US dollar.

The NAPC said as the WB defines it, "PPP conversion factors take into account differences in the relative prices of goods and services” and is measured in current international dollars which, in principal, have the same purchasing power as a dollar spent in the US economy. Because PPPs provide a better measure of the standard of living of residents of an economy, they are the basis for the World Bank's calculations of poverty rates at US$1 and US$2 a day."