The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) clarified what it called “recent misconceptions” surrounding the food and poverty thresholds arising from the agency’s estimate that P64 per day for three meals is considered sufficient to avoid being classified as “food poor,” saying it will review the methodology for calculating those metrics next year.
“Those thresholds serve as part of a broader set of tools used to assess the country’s development progress and to measure the effectiveness of the government’s policies and programs in addressing poverty,” NEDA Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said in a recent statement.
“They are not, and were never intended to be, prescribed budgets for a decent standard of living. They do not dictate how much a family should spend on food, nor do they provide an idea of a desirable household budget,” he added.
Balisacan mentioned on a 2025 national budget hearing that the monthly food threshold for a family of five is P9,581, or around P64 per person. In response, various groups slammed the poverty measure as disconnected from reality.
Meanwhile, the Philippine Statistics Authority also agreed that the food threshold per person a day is “insufficient,” saying that it will review the methodology for calculating poverty and food thresholds next year, as the adjustment in 2021 was postponed due to the pandemic.
“It’s really insufficient but [the way] we set up the food threshold and the poverty threshold is the minimum basic needs, so it’s the least cost,” said National Statistician Dennis Claire Mapa.
The Philippines needs an economic and development body that should be grounded in reality, and not one that is so obsessed with hitting targets that it resorts to manipulating the figures. Hopefully this clarification makes the NEDA and PSA more aware of the impact of their assumptions and calculations, and if the tools and metrics they are using are either outdated or out of touch with reality, then it would’ve been fortunate that the matter was raised, as a comprehensive review should serve those government bodies well.*
