Group: RP poverty level slowly dropping

from The Sun Star

By Stephen Capillas

THE National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) said critics and skeptics of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's statements of a seven percent plus economic growth in the country should realize that standards of living differ in various parts of the country, thus could not be taken to mean a decline in the quality of life of Filipinos.

During a forum at the Philippine Information Agency (PIA)-Northern Mindanao, NAPC chairman Domingo Panganiban cited an Asian Development Bank-World Bank (ADB-WB) report stating that most of the regions in the country are now earning more than US$2 a day or roughly more than P100 a day.

Despite this, Panganiban said costs of living in the country vary, with regions in Luzon barely getting by on P245 a day while those in the Visayas and Mindanao can survive on less than P100 a day due to the availability of vegetables and other food produce.

"Thus we can not compare their living standards since it costs more to live in Luzon while it's cheaper to live in Visayas or Mindanao," he said.

For his part, Presidential Assistant for Northern Mindanao Pacificador Pupos said that while they have yet to compile data, their office is confident that poverty in Northern Mindanao remains low compared to the poverty level in Luzon, particularly the National Capital Region (NCR) where Panganiban said most families earn below US$2 a day.

"At least here, we can ask vegetables and pickled fish (ginamos) from neighbors unlike those in Manila," Pupos said.

He said the National Government's commitment to ease poverty in Mindanao had been signified by President Arroyo in a visit here in Cagayan de Oro, where she pledged to allocate at least 30 percent of the national budget.

Earlier, the NAPC said they have talked with local government officials concerning the government's Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and secured from them a commitment to help reduce the poverty level in their communities by 50 percent on or before 2010 up to 2015.

Panganiban said the National Government is on track to reduce the country's poverty level by 50 percent as cited in an ADB-WB report, which showed that the number of poverty-stricken residents in Manila alone went down from four million last year to 3.6 million in the early part of this year.