by LEONOR MAGTOLIS BRIONES

MDGS? WHAT MDGs?

	THE ambulant and transient poor are excluded from official poverty estimation. [photo by Jaileen Jimeno]

For the last several months we have been swimming in an alphabet soup of acronyms — NBN, ZTE, NEDA, FG, FGI, to name a few. And more keep pouring in; these days, the most oft-repeated one is NFA, or the National Food Authority. Yet what we should have been repeating like a mantra is MDG and its plural form, which stands for Millennium Development Goals. In 2000, the Philippines became one of the signatories to the Millennium Declaration, thereby sealing its commitment to meeting by 2015 eight goals that address development concerns worldwide. Last year marked the midpoint in the period allotted to the achievement of these MDGs.

In its progress report on the MDGs that it launched last October, the Philippine government said there may be trouble ahead regarding targets for achieving universal primary education (goal number 2), as well as those on improving maternal health (goal five), specifically improving the maternal mortality ratio and increasing access to reproductive health services. But it also said that there was a high probability of meeting most of the other targets for the rest of the goals, which are: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger (goal 1); promoting gender equality and empowering women (goal 2); reducing child mortality (goal 4); combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases (goal 6); ensuring environmental sustainability (goal 7); and developing a global partnership for development (goal 8).

Even in October, the Philippine midterm progress report made economists and development experts blink and purse their lips. Today, just a few months later, the furrows on their brows have also deepened.

On January 31, 2008 the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) reported an increase of 7.3 percent in the GDP for 2007. Less than two months later, the NSCB said that poverty had worsened between 2003 and 2006. During the recently concluded Philippine Development Forum, representatives of donor institutions and countries asked repeatedly: “How come there is rising poverty and hunger in the midst of growth?”

Before the statistics on worsening poverty broke out, rosy projections about the future and the MDGs were also threatened with fears about a looming U.S. recession and increases in the price of oil. These developments cannot help but have a profound impact on the attainment of the MDGs by 2015.

TO BE fair, the high probability of attaining most of the targets hold true for national figures. But the picture changes dramatically when data are broken down to the local level. The wide disparities among regions, provinces, and municipalities are vast and seemingly insurmountable. The Philippine midterm report itself recognized the yawning gaps across regions. Among the challenges it identified were the high population growth rate, the low performance of the agricultural sector, the weak implementation of basic education and health reforms, and lax enforcement of laws. It also noted the problems with the financing gap, the capacity of local governments, transparency and accountability, peace and security issues, public-private partnerships, and targeting, database, and monitoring.

But perhaps what has to be scrutinized first is the mystery of worsening poverty amid supposed economic growth. After all, eradicating poverty is Goal No. 1, with its more specific targets being to reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day, as well as those suffering from hunger. The level of success in achieving this goal has a profound impact on the rest of the MDGs.

Yet no less than government statistics confirm the worsening of poverty. The twin threats of a looming rice crisis and global warming also do not warrant the happy prediction of a high probability of meeting the goal in nutrition — and especially not when surveys of the Social Weather Stations reflect persistent high levels of hunger, particularly in the National Capital Region (NCR) and in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

In 2003, the government counted four million families as poor. By 2006, that figure had gone up to 4.7 million. This translates to 27.6 million wretched souls. The poverty threshold for the same year went up from P12,309 per capita annual income to P15,057.

Even worse, the number of the subsistence poor or absolutely poor has been rising. There are now 11 million families or 14.6 million individuals who belong to this category.

To quote the NSCB, “In terms of poverty incidence among population, out of 100 Filipinos, 33 were poor in 2006, compared to 30 in 2003.” This means a full third of the population! No wonder even the usually sedate and diplomatic representatives of foreign institutions and donor countries expressed utmost concern and repeatedly raised the issue during the Philippine Development Forum.

Here are more depressing statistics: In 2003, official figures indicated that 56.9 percent of households have per capita intake below the 100 percent dietary requirement. Given the other economic data, it is likely that proportion has become bigger. In more pedestrian terms, more than half of households are not getting adequate nutrition.

Yet the government keeps on saying that the country is experiencing unprecedented economic growth.

What officials may be refusing to see is that growth can only be meaningful if it results in increased incomes, more jobs, and stable prices for the man on the street. Among the initial questions that should be asked then are: Where is the growth coming from? Who are the main beneficiaries? These are crucial queries because the state of the economy cannot be separated from the state of social development, particularly the MDGs. Like the MDG numbers, while the national totals look good, they raise worries when disaggregated.