On Tuesday, November 8, the head of President Rodrigo Duterte’s economic team said that the President’s target is to lift 1.5 million people from poverty every year during his term. The plan is to sustain at least 7 percent economic growth annually.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez disclosed that Duterte wishes to reduce the poverty rate up to eight points by the time he steps down from the position in 2022.
According to official data, one-fifth of the Philippines’ 100 million are poor, 1.4 million of which were lifted from poverty in 2012 to 2015.
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Dominguez said, “The high growth rate will not be enough if it is not inclusive.”
He adds that wealth under the Duterte administration will be “evenly distributed” unlike the past wherein the problem was that “our economy, while posting healthy growth, makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.”
Data has shown that in the second quarter, gross domestic product has expanded by 7 percent which is one of the fastest growth rates in Asia, while figures of the third quarter are due later this month.
Presidential Peace Adviser Jesus Dureza has pointed out that the uplifting of the poor’s lives is essential in ending the decades-long Muslim rebellion in Mindanao.
“I can sign a thousand peace agreements, engage all rebels, bring them all to Malacañang… all this will go to naught if we don’t come together to improve the lives of people on the ground,” Dureza stated.
President Duterte is currently engaging in peace talks with both the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Moro National Liberation Front. He had signed an executive order on Monday to give both groups a representation in a transition body which shall draft a new autonomy law intended for the Muslim minority in the south.
This week, Duterte also welcomed MNLF founding Chairman Nur Misuari in the presidential palace, who once claimed to have been shunned out of a peace deal made by the MILF by the former president, Benigno Aquino III.
Source: (news.abs-cbn.com)
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