ANGELES CITY–The government says poverty incidence in the country has slid to merely 12.1 percent. But another estimate is that even as much as 80 percent of Filipinos live below poverty level.
Anakpawis Partylist leader Fernando Hicap has given credence to the latter, hitting the government for manipulating poverty threshold parameters to make it appear that the lives of Filipinos have improved under the Duterte administration.
“The poverty threshold should be replaced by the family living wage which the Ibon Foundation computed at P1,014 daily. In 2015, government data reported that half of Filipino families lived under P182,000 annually or P505 daily. Thus, 80 percent lived under P876 daily.,” he noted.
Hicap said that if family living wage is used as parameter, the poor in the country would comprise from 50 to 80 percent, while only about 20 percent are above the poverty line.
He decried the recent report of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) that poverty incidence declined from 17.9 percent in 2015 to 12.1 percent in 2018, based on a P10,727 monthly poverty threshold for a family of five members.
“Government bureaucrats pride themselves of high education, but they have become desperate in churning out fantastic situation outside the realm of common sense. Their poverty threshold tells us that a Filipino who has only P80 in his wallet is not poor,” Hicap said.
He recalled that 2018 was the first year of implementation of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law and the rice crisis when the retail price of rice reached as high as P50 per kilo.
“Thus, it was very improbable that poor Filipinos rose from the level of poverty during the period,” Hicap said.
