NEDA vows stronger push for family planning

MANILA, Philippines — The National Economic and Development Authority will be aggressive in its implementation of the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health (RPRH) Law after Malacañang returned the Commission on Population (PopCom) to the NEDA. 

President Duterte signed on Thursday Executive Order 71 renaming PopCom as the Commission on Population and Development (CPD) and reverting its attachment to NEDA from the Department of Health (DOH). 

CPD is mandated to formulate and adopt coherent, integrated and comprehensive long-term plans, programs and recommendations on population and family planning as it relates to economic and social development.

It was an attached agency of NEDA from 1991 until 2003 before its supervision was placed under the DOH.

“We will certainly step up our implementation of the RPRH law,” said Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia. 

“We will follow what is in Chapter 13 of the PDP (Philippine Development Plan) which is speeding up the full implementation of the RPRH law, making sure that there will be no shortages of services and commodities at the local level so implementation will be in full swing. Because with DOH, it was moving really slow, it’s hardly moving and we feel we can do a better job,” he added. 

The Philippine Development Plan 2017-2022, the country’s development blueprint crafted by NEDA, has identified the integration of population and development as one of the key strategies to accelerate the country’s economic growth and improve the quality of Filipinos’ lives.

“NEDA will make sure that the country’s population is well-managed and programs related to it are in sync with our overall development plans,” Pernia said.

Managing population growth is aligned with the poverty reduction strategies of NEDA under the current administration. 

Pernia had said that full implementation of the RPRH law would enable more women in the poorest quintile of the population to join the workforce as they can limit the number of children they will have. 

The Duterte administration wants to reduce the national poverty incidence to within a range of 17.3 percent to 19.3 percent this year from a base of 21.6 percent in 2016.

The RH law was first enacted in 2012, but its full implementation was interrupted in 2015 when the Supreme Court (SC) issued a temporary restraining order that stopped the DOH from distributing contraceptives.

The SC also prohibited the Food and Drug Administration from approving pending applications for reproductive health products and supplies. 

In 2017, the SC lifted the TRO after the FDA declared 51 contraceptive products in the market as non-abortifacient.