Filipinos who spend more than P21 a meal, or over P64 in a day, are not "food poor," said the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) on Tuesday, August 13.
"As of 2023, the monthly food threshold for a family of five is P9,581. That comes out about P64 per person (daily)," revealed NEDA Secretary Arsenio Balisacan in the Briefing of the Development Budget Coordination Committee (DBCC) for the proposed 2025 national expenditure program.
When questioned by Senator Nancy Binay as to the sufficiency of P20 per person for three meals a day, Balisacan responded that inflation has been taken into account in putting together the baskets of goods being given, although its contents have not been changed for a while. He said the poverty threshold was "due for revisit" as it was last delineated a decade ago, and economic changes in the country since then "warrant" it.
He said however, that the threshold has persisted with adjustments considering only inflation because the agency needs to keep tabs on developments and indications of policy and program efficacy.
"But the reason we are keeping it constant in real terms, after adjusting for inflation, (is) just to ensure that we are tracking properly the changes and (to) allow us to understand whether our policies or programs are working insofar as these are able to reduce poverty," he explained.
"But there are certain things that need to be constant, and there are certain things that have to be adjusted," Senator Grace Poe said. "Because when you compute poverty thresholds using an old number, which is obviously not workable anymore at P20 a meal, hindi totoo yung poverty forcast ninyo (your poverty forecast is not true)."
Balisacan defended the threshold, saying adjustments have been made for inflation.
"Every time that we calculate a new poverty number, we adjust it for the inflation," he said.
"'Yung (in) 2021, it (the threshold) was (P)55. 'Yung (in) 2023, it was (P)63, and then by 2024, that is expected to go up to (P)67," he told the senators.
The contents of the goods basket was not "invent[ed]" by the NEDA, Balisacan said, but was decided on by other agencies as well, namely, the Department of Health (DOH) and the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI).
"Sila po ang nagdetermine ng basket na iyon (they are the ones who determined the contents of that basket), ang what constitutes a reasonable food basket that could meet the nutritional, particularly the calorie requirement," he said. "So hindi naman NEDA ang nag-invent ng basket na iyon, it's the FNRI. And then linagyan lang ng presyo."
("So it wasn't NEDA that invented that basket, it's the FNRI. And then a price was put on it.")
Binay asked if the basket's goods could be purchased at P20 per meal for each member in a household of five, which Balisacan confirmed.
"Ngayon po, oo (fits at P20), kasi napaka basic, very basic lang yung basket," he replied.
"Ngayon (now) of course, with the growth of the economy, as I said, maybe we should revisit that because preferences could have changed already, the relative prices have changed--kasi nga nakita natin 'yung price of rice has been, the inflation there has been over 20% for the last couple of months. So obviously, doon lang, ubos na yung P20 per head," he admitted.
According to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), regular milled rice in July 17 was priced at P50.88 per kilo on average, while the costs of other agricultural commodities like galunggong, tomatoes, and red onions average at P200.34 a kilo, P137.85 a kilo, and P132.24 a kilo.
