An island outlier

I’m writing this in the rustic town of Alabat on the island of the same name, which is an hour’s boat ride from the port of Atimonan in the province of Quezon. I am here with a study team analyzing persistent poverty in Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon), the most industrialized among the country’s regions, and with the lowest incidence of poverty outside of Metro Manila (at 6.7 percent). But of its 122 municipalities and 20 cities, 35 towns still have higher poverty than the national average. Alabat is not one of them —in fact, far from it. On the other hand, all other island-municipalities in the region belong to that list, which the Regional Development Council has identified as priority convergence areas to receive special government focus.

Alabat is proof positive that in this country, island-municipalities need not be poor. The Philippine Statistics Authority estimated poverty incidence here to be 13.4 percent of the population as of 2012 (the latest year for which municipal-level poverty estimates are available). This was just little over half of the nationwide poverty incidence of 25.2 percent then. Even more impressive is that it belongs to a province that has a much higher poverty rate, at 34.1 percent. Within the province of Quezon then, this island-town’s performance is stellar.

The seeming puzzle doesn’t end there. The island has two other towns, sandwiching Alabat: Perez on the north, and Quezon (municipality) on the south, which, at its southernmost tip, nearly touches the mainland at the town of Lopez. Even as the three are directly adjacent and accessible to one another via a good paved road, the poverty incidence in Perez is 37.7 percent, while that in Quezon is 26.4 percent—nearly thrice and twice that of Alabat, respectively. The same contrast is seen in the three towns’ comparative health and nutrition data, particularly on incidence of underweight: Perez and Quezon have underweight incidence of 11.3 and 10.6 percent, respectively, more than thrice Alabat’s 3.4 percent. As these towns possess very similar natural endowments, there’s clearly something Alabat is doing right that its neighbors haven’t quite caught on to yet. That’s what our team is here to

investigate and understand more closely.

Well before setting out for the island, we had already heard some observations from people who have been watching Alabat over the years. We were told of the town’s calamansi industry, now supplying the product to Jollibee for use in its extensive restaurant chain. We also learned that it supplies hot chili pepper to the same company’s Chow King and Mang Inasal restaurant chains. When we arrived, our hosts brought us to sample the chocolate produced by one of the town’s prominent cacao producers and chocolate tablea maker, whose products now reach other parts of the globe. Our hot chocolate was sweetened with coconut sugar from Alabat’s own coconut producers, now cashing in on this product popular for its lower glycemic index compared to cane sugar.

All these are a departure from the traditional livelihoods that people of the island had known for generations: rice farming, coconut production for copra (to be turned into coconut oil in Lucena City), and fishing—the very same industries where we find the poorest of the Filipino rural poor, especially the latter two. It seems that Perez and Quezon are still stuck mainly with those three traditional economic activities, although there are now some beach resorts drawing visitors from the mainland.

Before heading to the island, we had also heard good things of Alabat’s two-term mayor, Fernando Mesa, a retired military general who ran and won as a political independent. On arrival, we heard even more positive things about him, and how his unifying, nonpartisan and spiritually grounded way of leading is credited with turning this erstwhile sleepy town into the exception it has become in the region, and possibly in the whole country as well. I write this hours before our study team is to meet him for the first time. Even so, the secrets of Alabat’s unusual performance seem to have begun to unfold before us, and we can’t wait to learn more.

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