I ATTENDED the Arangkada Forum in 2017 and published a column about the discussions at the forum a few days later. Today, nine years later, I would like to share with you what was discussed during the forum and what recommendations were made.
During the Arangkada Forum on 14 September 2017, there was much focus on sectors with substantial growth potential-including agriculture, creative industries, ICT, manufacturing, mining, logistics and tourism. In my panel, we discussed agriculture, creative industries and tourism. Inclusive growth and raising the poor out of poverty through employment generation were issues raised by all panelists, given the fact that the high rate of poverty and the high number of poor citizens has been a persistent development challenge in the Philippines.
Quite a number of recommendations were made at the Arangkada Forum to improve social protection programs, including the government’s Conditional Cash Transfer program, to protect the poor (I selected a few):
Recommendations:
1: Continue to reduce number of poor in absolute terms and as percentage of population.
2: Continue to reduce the incidence of hunger.
3: Expand insurance coverage to include more poor.
4: Successfully implement expanded CCT program to include all 6.9 million poor families.
5: Implement unemployment Insurance as a social safety net.
6: Enhance CCT program to ensure that the rights of poor children are upheld and to help child beneficiaries and their families to become more self-sufficient and self-reliant. (Urban Farming is the way to go; the City of Quezon City is doing well along this line)
7: Create jobs and economic opportunities. Job creation in the industrial, agricultural and service sectors will be facilitated by government, in collaboration with the private sector.
10: Implementation of national ID system for improved targeting of social services. Participants identified the pressing need to institute a national ID system that will allow government agencies to provide more targeted social services and prevent double-counting or leakage.
In agriculture, we need to deliver support services to farmers and fishermen such as financing, incentives, technology, irrigation, post-harvest facilities, farm-to-market roads, improved logistics and integration in the supply chain to fully develop the potential of the agricultural industry to develop rural areas and the countryside.
As a consequence, some 20 million rural Filipinos can be lifted out of poverty. And the children of farmer will stop moving from rural areas to urban centers or become OFWs.
I believe that some recommendations were addressed but many ideas about helping the poor still need to be done. I hope President Marcos focused part of his yesterday’s SONA on the ‘War on Poverty.’