Socio-Economic Profile
The Philippines, is an archipelagic nation of about 7,100 islands, with 3 major island concentration, i.e, Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. In its 2007 census, the Philippines reported a total population of 88.7 million. The Philippines is politically and administratively divided into 16 regions with Metro Manila as the center of business and commerce as well as political activities. Metro Manila reports a current population of about 11 million.
Even with the adverse economic, environmental and political events that affected most of the countries of the world in the last 8 eight years or so, the Philippines continued to exhibit resiliency and sustained growth. As of the second quarter of 2009, the Philippines, posted a very modest growth as GDP grew by 1.5% compared to the 4.2% posted as of the same period of the previous year. The simple growth was brought about by the push from government spending as well as from Construction, Mining and Quarrying sectors, as the Manufacturing sector posted negative growth in the last two quarters of 2009. The Government’s economic resiliency plan boosted Government Consumption to grow by 9.1 percent from its zero growth in 2008.
Meanwhile, the Agriculture, Fishery and Forestry sector also recorded minimal growth of 1.0 percent, mainly brought about by Fishery, Banana, Poultry, Livestock and Palay[1]. The reported growth in the 2nd quarter, effectively avoided the recession that had threatened the Philippines when GDP declined the previous reporting quarters.
The continuous US dollars inflows sent by the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), estimated to reach at over USD16.0 billion by yearend, also helped stabilize the Philippine economy. The inflows stemmed the negative impact as total Exports dived to negative 16.7%, the lowest since the 4th quarter of 1998.
Secretary General Romulo A. Virola of National Statistical and Coordination Board (NSCB) in the same report, pointed out that as population reached an estimated 92.0 million as of June, 2009, per capita GDP declined by 0.5 percent from 2.1 percent in the previous year while per capita GNP decelerated to 2.4 percent from 3.2 percent. He also reported that at current prices, the per capita GNP now stands at PhP44,828 or USD937 for the first semester.
On the immediate short-term, the big challenge or the Philippine economic managers for the remaining months of the year is to see to it that growth would continue, however modest, and not fall into recession. The Philippines in the last few years have made inroad in battling poverty through pro-poor and middle class programs, including access to financial resources, generally hard to access by the poor from the regulated financial sector.
About half of the population of the Philippines live in rural areas where poverty is most severe and widespread. Dependence on agriculture, mostly subsistence farming and fishing are generally the only source of income for the poor rural people. The roots of poverty in the rural areas differ from island to island but generally, the causes of rural poverty can be traced to the decline in the productivity of farm activities, unsustainable practices that led to deforestation as well as absence of economies of scale due to smaller farm sizes.
As we look at poverty in the Philippines, the NSCB official poverty statistics for 2000, 2003 and 2006 show that ironically, farmers and fishermen, the producers of our basic food commodities, rice and fish, are two of the poorest sectors because of insufficient income. Indeed, responding to the needs of our fishermen and farmers should be a major issue that must be addressed by any poverty reduction program. We need to increase the production/supply of rice and fish to ensure affordable prices but at the same time, we need to increase the income of our farmers and fishermen.
The unabated population growth continues to exert pressures not only for the policy makers and government in general, but practically to the whole country as resources are not increasing but rather dwindling. As can be gleaned in Table 1, the average annual population increase stood at 2.04%, which is much lower compared to the last 6 census made, lower growth rate is very much desired. On the average, the population growth in the last 4 decades is 2.52%.
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