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Ike Señeres

YOU may not have noticed it yet, but some incoming officials of the new administration are now announcing “poverty reduction” as a goal, rather than “poverty alleviation.” For so many years now, I have been writing about this subject, only to be frustrated about the fact that many government officials either do not know the difference between the two, or would not care to know the difference. Simply put, “poverty reduction” means reducing the number of people who fall below the poverty line, and “poverty alleviation” means providing services to the people below the poverty line, but without the end result of reducing the poverty rate.

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As I know it, the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program of the government is only supposed to be a poverty alleviation program, meaning to say that it was never meant to be a poverty reduction program. Much to my surprise however, I heard claims from the outgoing Administration that the CCT program has already helped reduce the poverty rate. From the looks of it, there is an element of intellectual dishonesty in making that claim, in much the same way that there appears to be an element of intellectual dishonesty in the claim of the outgoing Administration that the poverty rate has already gone down, simply because they modified their formula for computing the poverty rate.

Not too many government officials may have noticed it yet, but the Philippines as a member country of the United Nations (UN) has actually committed to 100 percent poverty eradication by the year 2030. Mind you, the commitment is for poverty eradication, and not just for poverty reduction. Being an original founding member of the UN, our country has an extra moral obligation to make good on our commitments, and not just paying lip service to whatever UN agreements that we would commit to. Looking back, the Philippines has also committed to reducing the poverty rate by 50% on or before the year 2015, based on the year 2000 figures. As we all know, we did not meet that goal.

In case you are wondering why I am talking about poverty when in fact this article is about growth and development, I have done so because it appears that many government officials either do not know the difference between the two, or would not care to know the difference, in much the same way that they do not know the difference between poverty alleviation and poverty reduction. As it is supposed to be, growth can happen without planning and conversely, there could be no development if there is no planning. To cite an example that is directly related to this subject, poverty alleviation could happen even without planning, but poverty reduction needs planning.

Not too many local government officials may have realized it yet, but the local development councils (LDCs) are actually the official planning bodies at the local level, with municipal, provincial and regional development as the end results, as the case may be. As I know it, each town or city is supposed to have its own development plan that shall serve as its roadmap for the planning period. As it is supposed to be, the civil society is supposed to have representatives to these planning bodies, so much so that the goal of public and private partnership is already built-in into the system. As of now, it seems that the timelines assigned to these roadmaps are not very clear.

We all know that the term of an elected President is six years, but for some reason, the medium term plans prepared by the government. For example, we now have the existing Philippine Medium Term Development Plan (PMTDP) covers the period 2011 to 2016, even if the term of the present President is from 2010 to 2016. I personally think five years is too short for medium term planning, but that is how it is know. I also wonder why the government does not appear to have short term and long term development plans, but that sounds more like an opportunity instead of a problem. As I see it, a short term plan could not be lesser than six years, and a long term plan should be more than six years.

Whether we like it or not, the term of local officials is only for three years, and it does not need too much thinking to decide that the local development plans should have a timeline of three years also. To be able to fill in the gap, the next PMTDP should cover the period from 2016 to 2022, which fits exactly the term of the incoming President. For good measure, there should now be a Philippine Long Term Development Plan (PLTDP) that should cover the terms of at least ten Presidents or the equivalent of sixty years. For example, the first PLTDP could cover the period from 2022 to 2082. If we do that, we could already cover the period from 2022 to 2030, considering that 2030 is the deadline for 100% poverty eradication under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN.

As far as I know, the preparation of the General Appropriations Act (GAA) is not automatically based on the PMTDP, even if that should logically be the case. I do not know what the actual sequence is, but as I see it, the preparation of the PMTDP should be done ahead of the GAA, so that the former could be used as a basis for the latter. As a matter of fact, the PMTDP should also be the basic reference for preparing the agenda items of the Legislative and Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC). That should be the case, because development is the reason for being of the LEDAC. If only the legislative and executive branches of the government could agree on a harmonized development agenda that is based on the PMTDP, then we could be sure that the GAA will also surely be development oriented.

Looking back, growth happened in the urban areas without planning for its development. Growth happened as the population grew and as more residential and commercial areas were built, but the flow of traffic became a problem because not enough roads and highways were built to accommodate the addition of more vehicles. As of now, garbage is still a problem because landfills and materials recovery facilities (MRFs) were not built. The fact is, very few local governments have built sewerage systems, because these systems were not part of their development plans. Yes, growth could happen without planning, but unplanned growth could be counter developmental as it becomes uncontrolled.

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