“We can bring it (unemployment rate) down to between 4% and 5% by the end of the term of President Duterte. That should be doable and that should be good enough because it’s very hard to reduce unemployment,” Mr. Pernia told reporters in a media round table last week.

“Underemployment I think needs more attention. It is still double digits so we should try to reduce that, maybe by another five percentage points. The way to do that is to create better quality jobs that are more regular and therefore more full time, and that would reduce unemployment by itself.”

Underemployment stood at 18.4% as of April, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.

In a June report, the World Bank said relaxed labor laws, improved worker skills, and greater ease of doing business in the country would open up high-quality and well-paying jobs for Filipinos, as a big chunk of workers remain in the informal sector.

The World Bank said only 15% of the poorest Filipinos secure formal wage jobs against 33% employed under the informal sector, 35% classified as “self-employed,” and 18% unpaid families.

Members of the Cabinet on Thursday held their first meeting for the new administration’s steering committee in crafting the Philippine Development Plan (PDP), Mr. Pernia said, adopting the macroeconomic targets and assumptions earlier set by the interagency Development Budget Coordination Committee in July.

Once adopted by the Executive branch, the PDP will serve as the government’s overall blueprint for national development by anchoring its programs and projects on goals outlined in the framework.

Other PDP targets include reducing poverty incidence to 16-17% by 2022 from the 26.3% rate tallied as of June 2015 by an annual drop at 1-1.5%, against a backdrop of strong economic growth between 7% and 8%.

Mr. Pernia also pointed out a goal of improved family planning as the government seeks to temper population control.

“[T]he contraceptive prevalence rate of modern methods can be brought up from I think currently it’s only about 39%, that would need to be brought up to 60%, the sooner the better. It’s common sense that if you allow poor families to reduce the number of children they have, that will reduce poverty,” the Cabinet official added.

Source: www.bworldonline.com