Poverty reduction and achieving “inclusive growth” will be the priorities of the country’s new socioeconomic planning secretary.
“I will look into poverty reduction and inclusive growth… There is no inclusiveness in our growth and it has been our problem for the past years already,” Arsenio M. Balisacan told BusinessWorld in a telephone interview yesterday, a day after his appointment as acting National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) director-general was announced by the Palace.
Mr. Balisacan, dean of the University of the Philippines (UP) School of Economics, replaced fellow UP economist Cayetano W. Paderanga, Jr. who resigned for health reasons, deputy presidential spokesman Abigail B. Valte said over the state-run Radyo ng Bayan last Saturday.
Mr. Balisacan, known in the region for his work in agricultural and development economics, said that among others, he would check progress in achieving the government’s Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP).
“What I expect to do is to identify where we are in achieving the development goals,” he said.
Mr. Balisacan also said he wanted to be “given time to learn the system, to be familiar with it, to first meet with the [NEDA] staff and to review the past achievements” of the government agency.
Mr. Balisacan has a doctorate in economics from the University of Hawaii. At the UP, he taught development economics, agricultural economics, and special topics on poverty, inequality, and institutions.
Before he was named dean of the UP School of Economics in 2010, Mr. Balisacan was chief of the Southeast Asian Regional Centre for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture from 2003 to 2009. He was undersecretary at the Department of Agriculture in 2000, 2001 and 2003, during which he also served as Philippine negotiator at the World Trade Organization.
His appointment comes at a time of worsening self-rated poverty and hunger as surveyed by the Social Weather Stations (SWS).
The latest SWS poll conducted last March 10-13 showed that an estimated 11.1 million families or 55% of the total claimed to be poor, an increase from 9.1 million or 45% in December.
Hunger, meanwhile, reached a record high with 4.8 million families (23.8% of respondents) said to have experienced “involuntary suffering due to the lack of anything to eat,” the SWS said.
Mr. Balisacan, who will also chair the National Statistical Coordination Board, Philippine Institute for Development Studies and the Philippine Center for Economic Development, said: “We need to break away from past patterns of growth, which largely failed to benefit the poorest rungs of our society.”
Mr. Paderanga on Saturday thanked the President for giving him the opportunity to serve in the Cabinet for the second time and for “understanding the reasons why I decided to leave.” Mr. Paderanga first headed the NEDA from 1990-1992 under the administration of President Corazon C. Aquino, mother of the incumbent president.
In an e-mail to BusinessWorld, Mr. Paderanga said his blood pressure was rising and “could not be stabilized with the usual stresses of being in the Cabinet.”
“It would have been optimal to leave between July and September when the [public-private partnership] projects would already start popping up. But that’s when my family said we could not take a chance. For me, it is enough that I have been able to contribute,” he added.
During the term of Mr. Paderanga, the old Build-Operate-Transfer Center was renamed the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Center and transferred to the NEDA from the Trade department.
PPP Center Executive Director Cosette V. Canilao said in a telephone interview that Mr. Paderanga’s resignation would not have an impact on the implementation of PPP projects.
European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines President Hubert d’Aboville, however, expressed concern.
“I am sorry for his (Mr. Paderanga) resignation and I hope he recovers soon from his sickness. However, my concern really is the PPPs. We need the DoTC (Department of Transportation and Communications), NEDA and DPWH (Department of Public Works and Highways) to double-time,” he said, adding that “one cannot be optimistic on PPPs” because elections are coming.
Mr. Paderanga, however, said the implementation of projects, “if anything, will speed up even further in the near term.”
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By Trisha P. Octaviano
Source: BusinessWorld, May 14, 2012
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