JULY 23, 2024 — President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr.’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) highlighted the government’s transformative actions and marching orders to fully implement the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2023-2028. These programs, policies, and projects seek to transform the country’s production and social sectors with the aim of achieving the government’s paramount objectives of food security and rapid, sustained, and inclusive economic growth.
During the Post-SONA Discussions on Tuesday, July 23, NEDA Secretary Arsenio M. Balisacan said that the whole government is prioritizing the Filipino people’s food security to ensure a sufficient and affordable supply of food in the short term while carrying out interventions to boost agricultural productivity and competitiveness in the medium term. The government is also accelerating its efforts to improve the country’s human capital (e.g., health and education outcomes) and promote investments to create more and higher-quality jobs, raise incomes, and reduce poverty sustainably.
Balisacan acknowledged the challenges posed by various domestic and external factors that have led to inadequate domestic production and higher food prices felt by Filipinos over the past two years. These factors encompass supply chain disruptions, geopolitical tensions affecting global trade, and extreme weather disturbances such as El Niño, intensified by climate change.
In response to these challenges, the government has put in place both short- and long-term solutions to address inflation and protect consumers and local producers. To safeguard the purchasing power of the most vulnerable sectors, the government has provided targeted social assistance, including fuel subsidies and financial aid, to farmers, retail rice traders, and low-income households, helping to mitigate the impact of higher prices.
To further ensure food security for every Filipino, the government recalibrated and implemented several policies to source more food supplies from the world market to augment domestic production. Notably, the issuance of Administrative Order (AO) No. 20 streamlined administrative procedures and removed non-tariff barriers to the importation of agricultural products. This order also reconstituted the government’s Surveillance Team to monitor the importation and distribution of agricultural products, thereby ensuring their efficient distribution and preventing price manipulation.
Furthermore, President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. signed Executive Order No. 62, which includes the updated Comprehensive Tariff Program for 2024-2028, to help manage food inflation, promote policy stability and investment planning, thereby further contributing to the nation’s food security and sustainable economic development.
However, even as inflation has gone down in recent months, NEDA emphasized the need for long-term solutions to improve the productivity of the country’s agricultural sector.
“Rightfully, the President identified the difficult—but necessary and urgent—interventions that we must commit to implement sustainably over the medium term. As we have said, there are no shortcuts. We have to massively increase our investments and support to the agricultural sector to raise the productivity and incomes of our farmers and enable them to become globally competitive as we strengthen their ability to meet the rising food demands of our growing economy,” said Balisacan.
“Through the government’s infrastructure program, we are accelerating efforts to enhance physical and digital connectivity—including our farm-to-market roads and logistics networks—as well as water supply, irrigation, and flood control. We want to help our farmers significantly reduce post-harvest losses, diversify their products into higher-value-added crops and alternative food staples, and, during rainy seasons like these, ensure that food reaches Filipino consumers, especially in the face of calamities, emergencies, and natural disasters,” Balisacan elaborated.
With the labor market remaining robust over the past two years, Balisacan emphasized the government’s focus on improving job quality for Filipino workers. “On the other side of the equation, we want Filipinos to have the ability to afford the goods and services they need to live decent lives. The challenge goes beyond reducing unemployment, which is already relatively low. More importantly, we aim to enhance the quality of the jobs available to our countrymen, which means improving our education and health outcomes and attracting more businesses to set up shop and create more jobs.” Balisacan added.
“We are happy to see that we are making progress. The underemployment rate—an indicator of job quality—reached a historically low level of 9.9 percent in May 2024, the lowest since 2005,” said the NEDA chief.
NEDA also noted that the May 2024 Labor Force Survey showed an increase in the number of middle-skilled, wage and salaried, and full-time jobs, signaling better-quality jobs for Filipinos.
On the demand side of the labor market, the government is working to establish a conducive policy environment, fast-track approvals and streamline processes, and push for massive investments in infrastructure to reduce the cost of doing business and encourage business expansion in various sectors and growth drivers.
On the supply side, the Marcos Administration is working to increase employability through upskilling and retooling initiatives and numerous human capital development interventions in the education and health sectors. Currently, NEDA is developing the Trabaho Para sa Bayan (TPB) Plan, which it expects to complete by the end of the year.
Furthermore, NEDA shared that despite the country’s challenges, the Philippines has made progress toward improving welfare. As reported by the Philippine Statistics Authority yesterday, July 22, the country’s poverty incidence recorded a significant decrease: it was recorded at 15.5 percent in 2023, down from 18.1 percent in 2021. Using the official poverty threshold, 2.45 million Filipinos were lifted out of poverty, marking significant progress toward the government’s goal of reducing poverty to a single-digit level by 2028.
“We know that high food prices disproportionately impact the poor as food constitutes a significant share of their consumption basket. For this reason, the President is devoting so much attention to our nation’s food security. The good news is, we also observed that poorer Filipinos’ average per capita income grew quite rapidly in the past two years – this is the kind of economic growth that we aspire for because it means that growth was inclusive,” said Balisacan.
“We have made significant gains over the past two years, though we continually face challenges on many fronts. Still, we remain steadfast in carrying out the PDP 2023-2028 as we remain dedicated to achieving our collective goal of a matatag, maginhawa, at panatag na buhay para sa lahat,” he concluded.
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