Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno said a robust agriculture sector will play a key role for a sustainable economic growth that could reduce the poverty level in the long term.
“If we achieve our objective of making the agricultural sector more vibrant, more organized and more productive, I think that will have a huge impact on the [reduction of the] poverty incidence in the country,” Diokno said in an interview over a public affairs program over the weekend.
He said the agriculture industry was not working in the past, with fluctuating and almost negligible contribution to the economy. He said the poverty incidence in the agriculture sector is also high.
He said based on previous performances of the economy, sustained growth will help drive poverty incidence rate reduction.
“Before the crisis, the Philippine economy was growing between 6 to 7 percent and, in fact, we were close to our original target of reducing poverty to around 14 percent in the country by the end of President Duterte’s term, but of course the virus–the pandemic–intervened,” he said. Julito G. Rada