Full implementation of RH law to cut poverty: NEDA

NEDA Director General and Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia (PNA Photo)

MANILA — The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) is drafting an executive order (EO) mandating all local government units (LGUs) to implement the Reproductive Health (RH) law, which it deems vital to the government’s goal of accelerating poverty reduction in the country.

“I’ve been saying that the intensive and extensive implementation of the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health law is important. We are going to submit that (EO) to the next Cabinet meeting,” NEDA Director General and Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia told reporters Thursday.

Citing Commission on Population (Popcom) data, Pernia said efforts to fully implement the RH law were expected to bring down poverty from the current 19 percent to 9 percent by the end of the Duterte administration.

“That assumes that all LGUs are aboard in terms of full implementation,” he noted. “There is a demand for it, especially from poor families who don’t have access or limited access to family planning services.”

The NEDA chief said the family planning program was a “very powerful tool” and the cheapest way to reduce poverty.

“It is harder to reduce poverty by just macroeconomic growth. It has really to be targeted, focused on the poor families who are having more children than they can afford,” he said.

Pernia further said economic growth was a necessary condition but not sufficient for poverty reduction.

He believed that taxation was a way of redistributing a country’s wealth or economic pie.

“For poverty reduction, there are many more things that you need to do like social protection.

You have to generate employment, especially among the poor, so that they will improve their income earnings,” he added.

The economy grew 6.7 percent in 2017, making the Philippines still among the fastest-growing economies in Asia.