Mindanaotoday.com | Normin plans to cut 26.2% poverty level
By: URIEL QUILINGUING
Northern Mindanao’s economy grew by 7.2 percent last year, thus recovering its pre-pandemic gross regional domestic product (GRDP) figures, but this has yet to felt by its residents, a state’s planning agency official said.
“Poverty remains the biggest challenge,” Regional Director Mylah Faye Aurora B. Cariño of the National Economic and Development Authority-10 said before unveiling the Northern Mindanao Regional Development Plan, 2023-2028, on Wednesday, June 21, at SM Downtown Premier mall in Cagayan de Oro.
Cariño said the region brought down poverty levels by 15-percentage points before the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic was declared March of 2020, thus the six-year NMRDP is targeting to bring the 2021’s 26.2-percent poverty incidence among population down to 15, and among families by 10 by end of 2028.
She said the NMRDP, consisting of 21 chapters and sub-chapters, includes a listing of 2,045 identified 2,045 projects starting this year until 2028 and these could spur economic activities, create jobs, and provide livelihood opportunities.
These, she said, would require over P3-trillion public and private investments within the more than five-year period.
“The 2022 data is still incomplete until now, hence we used the 2021 figures,” the Neda-10 head told this paper, adding that the NMRDP was formulated after consultative meetings and focused group discussions were done.
Lanao del Norte Governor Imelda Q. Dimaporo, Regional Development Council-10 chairperson, in her state-of-the-region said that the completion of Panguil Bay Bridge, metropolization of Cagayan de Oro, and climate-resilient structures could hasten region’s goal as an “international gateway” by 2040.
The RDC-10, with Neda-10 as secretariat, has poised Northern Mindanao region of five provinces and nine cities to become the country’s “leading agricultural hub and major industrial, tourism, and trade center.”
Undersecretary Carlos Bernardo O. Abad Santos of Neda’s Regional Development Group, who graced the launch rites, described the NMRDP document as “meticulously crafted” and “aligned seamlessly” with the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028.
Abad Santos, in the presence of RDC-10 members and planners from regional line agencies and local governments as well as representatives from civil society and sectoral groups, said “this plan signifies not an end but rather the dawn of a crucial phase.”
Strategies, he said, must be translated into tangible actions and subjected to continuous evaluation and this also means navigating the challenges which include, among others, inflationary pressures, climate change, and spread of animal diseases—the region being a major producer of livestock and poultry products.
He acknowledged the region’s recovery from negative economic growth at the height of the pandemic, this time just behind the National Capital Region and the Cordillera Autonomous Region.
Last year’s 7.2-percent expansion of the economy was way above the region’s 6.3 percent in 2021 and 5.6-percent in 2019 (pre-pandemic), as computed by Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) and that 7.2 percent means an increase of P62.49 billion in the gross domestic product of the region.
In an earlier press statement, PSA-10 said a family of five needs an average of P11,920 per month to meet their basic food and non-food needs in 2021—the so-called poverty threshold (also known as poverty incidence) in Northern Mindanao.
PSA-10 said the 26.2-percent poverty incidence or about 1.72-million individuals in the region were living below the estimated regional poverty threshold that year.
Lanao del Norte posted the highest poverty incidence of 39.1 percent during the first semester of 2021 which represented about 62,900 families while Cagayan de Oro recorded the lowest poverty incidence of 11.6 percent or about 22,600 families.
Although Bukidnon’s poverty incidence was 36.9 percent, yet it has recorded the largest number of poor population and poor families in the region with 115,000 thousand families or 605,500 individuals, according to the PSA-10 report.
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