Painting rice cakes

“You can’t dull hunger by painting rice cakes,” says an Asian proverb. It explains the controversy sparked by the National Statistical Coordination Board’s latest poverty data.

Out of every 100 Filipinos, 29 scrounge below poverty lines set at a bare P9,385 yearly. That’s “virtually unchanged” from levels prevailing in 2006, then 2009, NSCB noted. Who hit the replay button?

“Households living below the poverty line declined slowly and unevenly in the past four decades,” Asian Development Bank noted in “Poverty in the Philippines” (2009). At 39 percent, Mindanao had the highest poverty incidence. There were 2 million poor families in Luzon.

“Boom and bust episodes” interlocked with “a high rate of inequality.” Earnings of the richest 10 percent of  households were 19 times that of the poorest 10 percent. Population growth ebbed slowly. In 1980, there were 48 million of us. This year, we’ll probably number 97.7 million—and counting.

There have been hefty upgrades from credit agencies like Standard and Poor’s to Moody’s Investor Service. Fitch Ratings jacked that up to “investment grade” for the first time ever. Credit  these partly to curbs on graft, which wrung 13 out of every 100 pesos, an earlier UN Development Programme estimate says. Even critics concede that President Aquino, like his mother Corazon, is not tarred by sleaze.

Structural changes to consolidate reforms are essential. Otherwise, the country will skid into what a National Academy of Science and Technology forum called “development progeria.” That’s economic debility stemming  from, among other things, neglect of agriculture and manufacturing.

Does the “poverty of  greed” also hobble us, as a nation?

Remember Mike Arroyo’s overpriced helicopters? Ilocos Norte Gov. Imee Marcos and Rep. JV Ejercito Estrada secreted bank accounts in the Virgin Islands. Communist rebels doll up extortion as “permit-to-campaign” fees, as demonstrated in the attack on Gingoog Mayor Ruth de Lara-Guingona.

“How quickly nature falls into revolt / When gold becomes her object,” Henry IV told Gloucester. For many “leaders” cash is the end all and be all. From a position of service, public office morphs into a tool for conserving perks. Older Filipinos called that “ley del estomago.” Where the “law of the stomach” prevails, poverty becomes the original sin.

At rock bottom, NSCB statistics are about “people with the tears wiped from their eyes.” Many of us do not see the poor. Yet, we bump into them at jeepney stops, churchyards or school gates.

“Your friend died Saturday night,” the beggar said. Now and then, the wife shared rice, medicine, blouses, a few pesos with this emaciated indigent, dressed in hand-me-downs. “We didn’t even get her name,” she murmured.

Penury interlocks with ill health and shabby education. These truncate lives across generation within “poverty webs,” asserts a UP School of Economics study. Life expectancy in Tawi-Tawi and Sulu is 55 years—like that of Ethiopia. In La Union, life spans exceed 74 years—short of Singapore’s 80.

“Life is the threshold at which all other hopes begin.” Infant mortality rates dropped from 60 percent in 1970 to about 29 today. Daily, 11 mothers die and 43 children are orphaned, the European Union points out. Malnutrition hobbles 22 out of every 100 Filipinos.

Can that toll be pruned down? What if the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry members paid correct taxes? Only 8 percent do, President Aquino noted.

“Here, net worth equals self-worth,” a banker explains. Balances in bank accounts and the make of one’s car set the pecking order. The priority is to raise high walls of gated enclaves. Many shrink  from contact with the needy—and jettison the chance to ease pain which keeps all of us human.

Yet, there is no mystery on what can be done to redress this imbalance. Local governments are the cutting edge in the reversal of poverty, the late Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo often stressed. LGUs “must formulate their own local  poverty reduction plans,” the ADB suggests. One way is to require “performance-based grants.” That’d improve hit-and-miss use of the 20-percent development fund and internal revenue allotments. “Performance-based grants” can improve targeting to reach the poorest first.

Government should continue to insulate from politics the successful P44.5 billion conditional cash transfer (CCT) program beyond the May elections. When fully implemented, this will benefit 3.5 million households.

A 2013 World Bank study confirmed that 98 percent of children, aged 6 to 11 years old, in barangays where the CCT program is implemented attend classes. They make regular visits to health stations and are dewormed. Sixty-four out of every 100 mothers obtained prenatal care, under the CCT.

The President backstopped Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman in beating off bids to politicize CCT. Yet the National Democratic Front of Filipino communists demanded, in Oslo, that the CCT be scrapped. “LOL”?

“Three decisions” underpin the Nordic countries’ achievement in development, explains Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University. “First, it prioritized education, notably science. Second, it decided to leave no countryman behind in a shared commitment from health to social insurance. And third, it built a vigorous private sector.”

That calls for more than “painting rice cakes.”

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