The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said the Marcos administration is accelerating its efforts to address concerns raised in recent surveys, particularly on inflation, food security, job creation, and poverty alleviation.
NEDA Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said the government is ramping up its efforts to manage price increases of basic commodities such as rice considering the El Niño phenomenon now sweeping the country and the continuing uptick in rice prices because of pressure from the global market.
Balisacan issued a statement after OCTA’s December 2023 Tugon ng Masa nationwide survey showed that majority of Filipinos were dissatisfied with the government’s efforts to manage inflation which hit 75 percent; poverty reduction at 46 percent; ensuring food security or access to affordable food (32 percent); creating more jobs (31 percent) and fighting graft and corruption (26 percent).
The NEDA chief, however, said the government is making significant strides in realizing substantial foreign direct investments that will generate more and higher-quality jobs to boost the incomes and purchasing power of the Filipinos.
“When President Marcos began his term, the Philippine economy was recovering from the record 9.5-percent contraction in 2020. The contraction set us back by about three years, with per capita gross national income (GNI) returning to its pre-pandemic level by the second half of 2023,” Balisacan pointed out.
“We have recovered and have indeed outshone our Asian peers as we posted a gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 5.6 percent in 2023, one of the fastest in the region,” he added.
Balisacan also said while external factors and domestic policy coordination challenges resulted in higher inflation in early 2023, both supply- and demand-side interventions worked to bring this down to 2.8 percent by January 2024, the lowest since October 2020.
Meanwhile, the labor market remained promising, with the unemployment rate reaching a low of 3.1 percent in December 2023, while the underemployment rate eased to 11.9 percent relative to its 12.6 figure in December 2022.
“The Cabinet has taken to heart the President’s directives by ensuring that the necessary policies are in place. We are facilitating massive investments in physical and human capital to create better jobs and improve our economy’s competitiveness while deploying the entire arsenal of policy tools to make food available, accessible, and affordable to the Filipino people,” Balisacan stressed.