This should give you an idea of the fleeting impact of aid dole-outs, institutionalized through the vote-buying national budget approved by Congress for 2025, with President Marcos’ acquiescence.
For the entire 2024, self-rated involuntary hunger nearly doubled from 2023, with 25.9 percent of families experiencing, at least once in the past three months, hunger and not having anything to eat. This is according to pollster Social Weather Stations (SWS).
Poor nutrition has led to physical and mental stunting of millions of Filipinos, affecting academic performance, innovation and national competitiveness.
The involuntary hunger is nearly as worse as the levels in 2020, the first year (and strictest period) of the COVID lockdowns, according to SWS. That’s a serious indictment; today the economic tsunami that hit the country as a result of the restrictions during that nightmare period is no longer around.
Hunger is supposed to be partly eased by the billions allotted to a wide range of ayuda, sourced from taxes including the consumption taxes automatically paid by those who need the handouts.
How are the dole-out programs being implemented? Did someone pocket the funds, or divert them to flood control?
The government has a supplemental feeding program for students in basic education. The food is fairly decent, including processed milk in cartons, champorado and arroz caldo. But this is for school kids. What about the food needs of the parents and other adult members of the family? Also, there are public schools that charge a subsidized fee for the food.
In the fourth quarter of 2024, obviously, pandemic mobility restrictions were no longer behind the lack of food for the poor. Instead the problem can be blamed on the limited means to ease hunger – a combination of low income and high food prices.
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As all reputable surveys have shown, inflation remains the top concern of Filipinos. Food prices compete with transport costs for the high inflation rate. And food inflation continues to be driven by the retail prices of the most politically sensitive commodity under Marcos 2.0: rice.
Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel must be regretting leaving his quiet life as a successful businessman to handle a sector in which BBM performed disastrously in his first year in power.
Today, Tiu Laurel seems to be at his wit’s end trying to bring down rice retail prices. Drastic measures have been tried, including a hefty cut in rice import tariff, to the dismay of local rice farmers.
A “maximum suggested retail price” of P58 a kilo is reportedly set to be slapped on rice imports. That’s nearly triple the P20-a-kilo rice “aspiration” of the “Babangon Muli” campaign in 2022. And P58 a kilo is actually higher than the price of good quality imports from Myanmar and Vietnam at my suki rice dealer.
Not even the Kadiwa outlets have ever managed to sell heavily subsidized rice at P20 a kilo under BBM.
Yesterday, the National Price Coordinating Council recommended to the Department of Agriculture (DA) the declaration of a food security emergency. Apart from aiming to bring down rice retail prices, the declaration is a requirement for allowing the National Food Authority (NFA) to sell its aging rice stocks at P36 per kilo to local government units (LGUs).
The Federation of Free Farmers says there is no need for this declaration.
LGU executives should also know enough to check the quality of old rice from NFA warehouses before releasing the grains to the public. Filipinos are sensitive to the quality of their staple and would resent getting substandard rice.
Last Wednesday, there was talk of imposing a price cap on rice. A sigh of exasperation posted by Cielo Magno over a similar move in September 2023 led to her departure from the Department of Finance and return to the saner life of teaching economics at the University of the Philippines.
Yesterday, Tiu Laurel said the P40-a-kilo rice sold under the DA’s Rice-for-All program would be cut to P38 per kilo beginning today. Kadiwa outlets will be selling the rice along with the cheapest at P29 a kilo.
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As for the insufficient income to buy food, it will never be addressed by stop-gap ayuda, given when politicians need to buy votes. It can only be addressed through the creation of sustainable jobs and livelihoods.
Unfortunately, politicians – lawmakers, LGU and barangay officials alike – play a critical role in job generation, but their hearts and personal interests are not into alleviating poverty through sustainable employment.
As seen in the 2024 fourth quarter survey conducted among businessmen by the Management Association of the Philippines, LGUs pose major hindrances to investment. Corruption is the businessmen’s top concern, according to the MAP survey.
While the survey didn’t provide specifics, corruption is rampant across all branches of government, with some of the most notorious shakedown artists ensconced in Congress.
Even getting tax-funded ayuda suffers from the injection of politics. Coursing requests for medical relief through the office of epal politicians, for example, adds another layer of red tape in obtaining ayuda by those who need it ASAP.
The situation is bound to get worse. In its Global risks Report 2025, the World Economic Forum identified economic downturn and poverty as the top two risks faced by the Philippines in the next two years.
Without decent jobs and sustainable rather than seasonal sources of income, poor families are sure to continue experiencing involuntary hunger regularly, in between occasional dole-outs of ayuda.
This is the Hunger Games, Pinoy version.