As more Filipinos lost their jobs last year due to the various lockdown measures imposed to combat the coronavirus pandemic, the government said that there are now an estimated 20 million poor Filipinos as the poverty rate rose to 18.3 percent.
Compared with the 2018 poverty rate of 16.7 percent, there are now an additional of more than 2 million Filipinos whose per capita income is insufficient to meet their basic food and non-food needs.
Karl Kendrick Chua, National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) chief, told the senate finance committee at yesterday’s 2022 budget briefing that the higher poverty incidence may be temporary.
“But it will gradually fall this year and next year,” Chua said.
Estimates show the poverty rate is seen to fall to 17.5 percent in 2021, and Chua is hoping that it will improve to 15.7 percent in 2022.
In nominal terms, the number of poor people is estimated to gradually decline to 19 million this year and 17 million next year.
“These are of course very fluid, because every time we have a surge that creates the need for an enhanced community quarantine, there is a corresponding increase in the number of unemployed and poor, so the sooner we address this and recover and catch up, the sooner we can bring the poverty reduction trend back,” Chua said.
However, aside from the rise in the number of poor Filipinos, Chua stressed that the one-year of no face-to-face, or virtual learning for students is projected to result in a total productivity loss of P11 trillion over a period of four decades.
“Basically, what we are seeing is the lack of face-to-face will limit the learning ability of students. And that has a permanent effect over the lifespan of the students while in the labor force,” Chua said.
“With the best data that we have, we have an estimate that productivity loss over the next 40 years is going to be around P11 trillion, for the one year where we had no face-to-face schooling,” Chua added.
Chua said that the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases previously approved the pilot face-to-face classes but it was deferred twice because of the COVID-19 surges.
“Unfortunately, everytime we tried to start the pilot, there (was) a new surge. For instance, in February, there was the surge from the new variants, and then when it was being resolved, we met again, and they said that we should prepare for the pilot (for the coming school year). Then (we had) the Delta variant. We have the plans, it was already approved, but deferred twice,” Chua said.
“But we are still keen to pilot as soon as we can, once the surge is over in the least risky area,” he added.
