By some accounts, the National Statistical Coordination Board
(NSCB) and its mother agency the National Economic and Development
Authority (Neda) ruffled feathers in the Palace and the Cabinet with the
way they announced the first semester 2012 poverty figures last week.
Some even speculated that it may have cost Neda Secretary Arsi Balisacan
his slot in the President’s delegation to the Asean meeting in Brunei,
having dropped out of the list at the last minute.
I can see why NSCB Secretary General Jose Ramon Albert and
Secretary Balisacan, disciplined academic professionals as they have
been in their former nongovernment personas, would choose to report the
news the way they did, and when they did. They can be expected to report
the facts as they are, good news or bad. They must also adhere to a
previously announced schedule for release of “designated statistics”
that include the quarterly reports on gross domestic product (GDP)
growth and other key statistics. Postponing the release of
not-so-flattering news until after the elections would have been an
obvious temptation for the government’s political strategists. But NSCB
and Neda would betray their constitutionally provided independence—not
to mention raise suspicions at the expense of their credibility—if they
were to deviate from their committed release schedule for data as
important as these.
On the other hand, perhaps it’s the journalist in me, but NSCB
didn’t really have to headline its report by outright saying that
Philippine poverty incidence had “remained unchanged.” It could just as
easily (and no less truthfully) have headlined that the poverty rate
appears to have gone down, from the 2009 level of 28.6 to 27.9 percent
of the population, or from 22.9 to 22.3 percent of families. It could
then qualify that the difference was not statistically significant (I
have seen NSCB do this before). Notice how when GDP growth rises or
falls by a few decimal points, no one pays attention to whether the
difference is statistically significant or not; GDP growth goes up or
down, period. Indeed, choice of words can make a great deal of
difference. And at the height of political season such as now, the
administration’s political strategists would understandably wish that
NSCB and Neda had taken some lessons on “wordsmithing” and been more
politically savvy in their reports, without necessarily forsaking the
truth. Media professionals call it “spin.”
There is, after all, good news in the poverty figures along with
the bad (and ugly). It is welcome news, for example, that poverty
incidence actually went down in the majority of our regions (9 out of
16) and provinces (50 out of 81). The best performing regions were
Cagayan Valley (Region II) and Zamboanga Peninsula (Region IX), both of
whose poverty rates (as a percent of families) fell by more than 11
percent. Poverty dropped from 22.3 to 19.8 percent of families in
Cagayan Valley, and from 41.5 to 36.9 percent in the Zamboanga
Peninsula. Other top performing regions were the Ilocos Region (18.5 to
16.7 percent, or a 9.7 percent drop), Central Visayas (31.6 to 28.8
percent, or a 9 percent drop), Western Visayas (26.7 to 24.7 percent, a
7.5 percent drop), Mimaropa (30.6 to 28.4 percent, a 7.2 percent drop),
and Bicol Region (36.5 to 34.1 percent, a 6.6 percent drop).
Tawi-Tawi was the best performer among the provinces, with
poverty rate dropping from nearly half (48.3 percent) of families in
2009 to only one-fifth (20.8 percent) by 2012, a steep 57 percent fall.
Following closely are Aklan (from 38.4 to 21 percent, dropping by 45.3
percent), Biliran (34.6 to 20.7 percent, a 40.2 percent drop), and
Benguet (whose already low poverty incidence of 7 percent was further
cut to 4.3 percent, a 39 percent improvement). Other top performing
provinces were Surigao del Norte, Surigao del Sur, Agusan del Sur,
Ilocos Norte, Camarines Norte and Zamboanga del Norte. Interestingly,
the last used to be the nation’s poorest province, with 63.6 percent of
its families poor in 2009. Now it is only the fifth poorest, dislodged
by Lanao del Sur, Apayao, Eastern Samar and Maguindanao, in that
order—all of whose poverty rates shot up in the three-year period by 27
to 54 percent.
The ugly news was the drastic rise in poverty in 19 provinces
where poverty incidence jumped by more than 25 percent within just a
three-year period. The island province of Camiguin—proximity to dynamic
Cagayan de Oro notwithstanding—fared worst, with poverty rate more than
doubling from 17.2 to 34.9 percent. Second worst was Zambales, with
poverty rate nearly doubling from 9.4 to 18 percent. North Cotabato’s
poverty rate jumped 80 percent, from 24.4 to 43.9 percent. Also seeing a
dramatic rise in poverty rates are Ifugao, Maguindanao, Aurora,
Quirino, Batanes, Nueva Vizcaya and Guimaras, all jumping by more than
40 percent. From the list, one might venture reasonable guesses on why
these provinces saw such a dramatic poverty rise, including political
turmoil and geographic isolation, especially in the case of island
provinces.
The recent reported poverty trends are sobering, but not
surprising. Even with huge amounts (P39.4 billion) given out as targeted
conditional cash transfers (CCT) to poor families in 2012, NSCB
calculates that more than twice that amount would have been needed to
close the poverty gap. Also, and as widely lamented, recent improvements
in the economy have not permeated down to the Filipino poor. We all
have our favorite theories and solutions, but what is clear is that
trickle-down economics and business as usual simply won’t bring our
poverty numbers down to where we all need them to go.
