from the Muslim News
MANILA - The ongoing rice crisis will push many more Filipino families into poverty and prevent the country from achieving the Millennium Development Goal to cut extreme poverty and hunger by 2015, according to NGOs.
"We are definitely not going to meet MDG1 [the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger]," says Joel Saracho, national coordinator of the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP-Philippines). "There is going be a further delay in achieving it by 2015."
Saracho predicted that the rice crisis would continue for some time, putting more pressure on Philippine food security and self-sufficiency and hitting the poor hardest.
Average prices of rice have risen P10 to P15/kg (23 to 34 cents) since the rice shortage hit three months ago. What used to cost P25 to P30 (58 to 69 cents) now goes for P35-P45 (81 cents to $1.04) in Manila stores. In Mindanao, rice is sold at P45-P51/kg (95 cents to $1.18).
Arze Glipo, lead convenor of Asia Pacific Network for Food Sovereignty, a group of farmers' organisations and NGOs, said the spike in rice prices would likely push many families further into poverty. "Rice is our staple food and food accounts for 60 percent of a family's [expenditure]. At the rate rice prices are increasing, many families will find themselves further along the poverty line," Glipo told IRIN.
The Philippines' MDG target is to cut the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and subsistence from 24.3 percent in 1991 to 14.6 percent in 2006 and 12.5 percent in 2015.
A mid-term report prepared by the National Economic Development Authority last year showed that compared with the 1991 baseline figure, the Philippines had bettered its mid-term target on extreme poverty to 13.5 percent in 2003, but in recent years the percentage has been increasing again.
In just three years, from 2003 to 2006, the number of poor Filipinos rose to 27.6 million from 23.8 million, according to the GCAP, an increase of 3.8 million. This translates to about 4.7 million families earning less than P6,274 ($146) a month. In Metro Manila, the poverty threshold is higher at P8,569 ($199) a month.
Inflation pressure
April 2008 inflation was up to 8.3 percent from 6.4 percent in March, based on figures released by the National Statistics Office, because of the hike in rice prices. April's figure is the highest monthly rate in two years.
Latest figures from the NSO showed that May 2008 inflation has further risen to a nine-year high of 9.6 percent. The highest inflation rate was recorded in January 1999 at 10.5 percent.
Saracho said inflation would exert further pressure on poor people. "Their income is barely enough for their daily needs yet there is a decrease in their purchasing power."
In Metro Manila, for instance, the spiralling prices of food have pushed the poverty threshold to P10,000 ($232.5) a month for a family of five, government statistics showed.
National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) director-general Romulo Virola warned last week that unless prices are capped, more families would slip below the poverty line.
Virola said the P10,000 threshold "only covers basic necessities such as food, education, health, transportation".
With the increase in the cost of living, the NSCB estimates that the number of poor families could swell to 259,135 in Metro Manila alone in 2008 from 167,316 in 2006.
The new estimate, however, is preliminary, as the official figure will be determined in 2009. Poverty surveys are conducted once every three years, and the last set of statistics on the poor was compiled in 2006.
Mindanao worst hit
Valerie Guarneri, World Food Programme (WFP) director for the Philippines, told IRIN that Mindanao was expected to be hardest hit by higher food prices, particularly in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and its outlying provinces.
Before the food crisis, the poverty level there had barely dipped from 50 percent of the population to 45 percent. "This is nowhere near the target of 25 percent by 2015."
"Even more disturbing," Guarneri said, "is the fact that the proportion of the population that fails to meet daily food needs has increased from 62 percent to 64 percent."
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Food prices have doubled in three years, according to the World Bank,
sparking riots in Egypt and Haiti and in many African nations. Brazil,
Vietnam, India and Egypt have all imposed food export restrictions.
In the Asian, African and Latin American countries, well over 500 million people are living in what the World Bank has called "absolute poverty"
Every year 15 million children die of hunger
For the price of one missile, a school full of hungry children could eat lunch every day for 5 years
Throughout the 1990's more than 100 million children will die from illness and starvation. Those 100 million deaths could be prevented for the price of ten Stealth bombers, or what the world spends on its military in two days!
The World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the world is well-fed, one-third is under-fed one-third is starving- Since you've entered this site at least 200 people have died of starvation. Over 4 million will die this year.
One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5. United Nations Food and Agriculture
The Indian subcontinent has nearly half the world's hungry people. Africa and the rest of Asia together have approximately 40%, and the remaining hungry people are found in Latin America and other parts of the world. Hunger in Global Economy
Nearly one in four people, 1.3 billion - a majority of humanity - live on less than $1 per day, while the world's 358 billionaires have assets exceeding the combined annual incomes of countries with 45 percent of the world's people. UNICEF
3 billion people in the world today struggle to survive on US$2/day.
In 1994 the Urban Institute in Washington DC estimated that one out of 6 elderly people in the U.S. has an inadequate diet.
In the U.S. hunger and race are related. In 1991 46% of African-American children were chronically hungry, and 40% of Latino children were chronically hungry compared to 16% of white children.
The infant mortality rate is closely linked to inadequate nutrition among pregnant women. The U.S. ranks 23rd among industrial nations in infant mortality. African-American infants die at nearly twice the rate of white infants.
One out of every eight children under the age of twelve in the U.S. goes to bed hungry every night.
Half of all children under five years of age in South Asia and one third of those in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished.
In 1997 alone, the lives of at least 300,000 young children were saved by vitamin A supplementation programmes in developing countries.
Malnutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths worldwide - a proportion unmatched by any infectious disease since the Black Death
About 183 million children weigh less than they should for their age
To satisfy the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only US$13 billion- what the people of the United States and the European Union spend on perfume each year.
The assets of the world's three richest men are more than the combined GNP of all the least developed countries on the planet.
Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger
It is estimated that some 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition, about 100 times as many as those who actually die from it each year.
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