Government’s Claims

PHILNET-WSSD’s View

The poverty incidence fell from about 40 percent in 1991 to nearly 36 percent in 1994. However due to the effects of the Asian financial crisis, it fell slightly to 36.8 in 1997 (ADB).

Government statistics on poverty incidence are understated because the poverty threshold is set very low: PhP 31.00 in 1997 (US$ 1.05) and PhP 38.10 (US$ 0.73) in 2000.[1] Yet independent estimates of the daily cost of living show that a family of six in Metro Manila needs P515 to meet food and non-food requirements. The legislated daily wage rate, on the other hand, is pegged at P265 in Metro Manila.

Basic literacy rose from 93.5 percent in 1990 to 95.0 percent in 1995, while functional literacy remarkably improved from 75.6 percent in 1989 to 83.8 percent in 1995.

The seeming statistical improvement is misleading. Even the National Statistics Office (NSO) admits that only 77% of the 22.5 million school-aged children (5 to 17 years old) were reportedly enrolled in school year 1999-2000. This means that about 5.0 million Filipino children failed to go to school at that time.

The year 1996 saw the completion and approval of the National Health Plan, 1995-2000.

The National Health Plan, however, aims to privatize health care. This is reflected in decreasing public spending for health—the PhP 129.40 (US$ 2.50) per Filipino in the proposed 2002 national government budget is a 25% drop from levels in the early 1990s—and in the privatization of government hospitals. There is also increasing reliance on private health maintenance organizations (HMOs) whose profits lie in charging high premiums and restricting coverage.

In June 1995, the Philippines launched the Social Reform Agenda (SRA) to enable people to have access to opportunities for undertaking sustainable livelihoods espoused under the agenda for change.

The SRA only provides so-called safety nets like livelihood training for farmers who are displaced by agricultural liberalization. It doesn’t provide, for instance, much needed subsidies on farm inputs and even ends up tolerating land conversion. In any case budgets for this have not even been forthcoming.

In 1993, the Philippine Population Management Program (PPMP) was implemented to serve as the government’s program for maintaining a healthy balance between and among population and resources.

This agency is silent on the operations of TNCs engaged in logging, mining and other industries which are the greatest despoilers of the environment. Indeed it deflects attention from them by blaming individuals instead. Nor does it address crucial equity issues.

For the period 1992-1996, a National Land Use Act was drafted in line with a goal of strengthening the existing process of identifying, determining, and evaluating alternative land use patterns to guide and enable appropriate land management and development. The Act was certified as a priority environmental legislation.

Again, this is silent on the plight of farmers who fell prey to land conversion. Because of other laws favorable to foreign investors like the Investors Lease Act of 1993, this cannot serve the interests of the poor majority. In any case, the bill has yet to be enacted.

In 1993, an Integrated Pest Management Program was introduced.

This does not directly ban the use of harmful chemical pesticides. Nor does it address the dumping of such products to the country.

In January 1996, the President signed the revised Executive Order No. 291 entitled “Improving the Environmental Impact Statement System (EIS).”

An EIS cannot succeed if the government does not have a clear environmental agenda which seeks, among others, to hold big local and foreign corporations accountable for their industrial waste. Experience has also shown that EIS are easily abused by private corporations and TNCs. Environmental consultancies have developed into a thriving business because of the law but but they are unable to control the proliferation of  environmentally-hazardous businesses—mining, oil refineries, distilleries, coal plants.

In 1997, the Environment Code, EO No.44, incorporating laws on quality of air and water resources was approved.

TNCs are still not held accountable for the pollutants they emit. 

In 1997, major policies and legislation were passed, among them: the Agricultural Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA), the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) and the Anti-Squatting Law.

By design, the AFMA aims to benefit mainly rural elites and transnational agri-business engaged in cash crops and fisheries for export. It deflects attention from genuine agrarian reform which is more meaningful for the vast majority of the poor peasantry. It will also facilitate opening up the country for the distribution and use of  agro-chemical TNCs’ certified and hybrid or genetically engineered seeds—for cash crops rather than staple food crops. 

The IPRA does not protect the ancestral domain claims of indigenous peoples and instead divides and coopts them into letting TNCs exploit mineral and forest resources.

The Anti-Squatting Law is geared towards facilitating the ejection of urban poor community residents to make way for real estate and “development” projects. It provides little assurance for the urban poor in terms of relocation.

In 1997, the Philippine National Development Plan (Plan 21) was formulated for the 2000-2005 period.

This does not tackle structural roots of poverty nor the intensification of the chronic crisis through globalization. Indeed, it ends up facilitating neoliberal globalization.

The Philippines is involved in the formation of ISO 14000.

This is just part of the government’s thrust of adhering to internationally accepted trade standards which does not benefit workers, peasants and basic sectors of society, as much as it does TNCs.

The Philippine Strategy for Biological Diversity Conservation (PSBDC) was approved in 1994 and the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) was approved in 1997.

As with Plan 21, these do not address the structural roots of poverty nor the intensification of the chronic crisis through globalalization and end up facilitating it.

In October 1996, the Presidential Task Force on Water Resources Development and Management (PTFWRDM) was created by virtue of Executive Order No. 374. The PTFWRDM drafted a bill which proposes the creation of a Water Resources Authority of the Philippines (WRAP) that sets the general framework for the planning and regulation of water resources with respect to quality, quantity and tariff.

Water utilities are being privatized nationwide, causing access to water to be primarily determined by capacity to pay.

The Philippine Clean Air Act was enacted into law in 1999.

TNC accountability vis-à-vis emission of pollutants was not clearly outlined in this law. Oil firms have also used this as an excuse for future oil prices, claiming that they have to pass on to consumers the cost of complying with this law. Rather, the Clean Air Act must be viewed in the context of deregulation and liberalization. TNCs which provide the technologies for companies to keep up with the standards set by act also stand to gain. However the Act has yet to be fully implemented because of corporate resistance.