Filipinos spending P64 a day for 3 meals not ‘food poor’ — NEDA

August 14, 2024 | 10:59am

MANILA, Philippines — Filipinos who spend a little more than P21.3 per meal are not considered food poor, according to the government’s current metrics to measure poverty. 

During the Development Budget Coordination Committee’s (DBCC) briefing at the Senate on Tuesday, Sen. Nancy Binay asked the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Secretary Arsenio Balisacan what the threshold was for food poverty. 

Balisacan said that accounting for inflation, the threshold is P64 a day for three meals, or roughly P21.3 per meal per person. The amount has already increased since 2021, which was then at P55 a day. 

“The basket has not been changed for some time, your honor,” Balisacan said. 

“When you compute poverty thresholds with an old number which is not, obviously not workable anymore, P20 per meal, hindi totoo yung poverty forecast niyo (your poverty forecast is not true),” Sen. Grace Poe said. 

The NEDA secretary admitted that the number was outdated, as it was set more than a decade ago. However, he explained that it was not NEDA that determined that basket. 

According to Balisacan, the computation for the basket was from the recommended food items from the Department of Health and the Food and Nutrition Research Institute. NEDA merely gave the numbers.  

However, the NEDA chief acknowledged that high rice inflation alone exceeds the meal. 

Binay said that the numbers do not match with what is needed for people to live beyond the minimum necessities. Balisacan agreed with this, saying that the numbers need to be revisited. 

Balisacan, however, maintained that the threshold needed to be set as a metric. He likened it to a ruler that should remain at a constant length.

“Our interest, insofar as monitoring is concerned is to answer the question: are our policies, programs, strategies working insofar as reducing poverty is concerned?” he said. 

The NEDA chief said that even if the poverty threshold was adjusted by 20%, the trend of poverty reduction would still be the same. 

“So far as 2021, 2023 is concerned, yes the conclusion is the same, that poverty indeed decreased regardless of whatever reasonable poverty lines you employed,” Balisacan said. 

However, Balisacan said that the poverty threshold does not necessarily determine how much aid the government doles out to the public. He cited the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s monitoring.

“The numbers there that they use is different from what we use for poverty monitoring. The use of these lines is only for poverty monitoring so that we can guarantee that the programs, projects and policies that we deployed are getting the results that are expected,” Balisacan said.