Research group IBON said that the Duterte administration is\nbeing dishonest in its recent pronouncements about high growth, reducing\nunemployment, and reducing poverty. The group said that the government is\ntaking liberties with statistics as part of its propaganda campaign that\nPresident Duterte is keeping his promise of real change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In its pre-State of the Nation Address (SONA) forum, the Department of Finance (DOF) hailed the Duterte administration for its achievements during its first three years in terms of \u201crapid economic expansion\u201d, \u201cthe lowest [unemployment] in 40 years\u201d, \u201calleviating poverty\u201d, and Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law \u201cbenefiting 99 percent of taxpayers\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to IBON executive director Sonny Africa however, growth\nhas actually been slowing since the start of the Duterte administration. Philippine\nStatistics Authority (PSA) data show that gross domestic product (GDP) growth\nhas been slowing in the 11 quarters since the start of the Duterte\nadministration from 7.1% in the third quarter of 2016 to 5.6% in the first\nquarter of 2019. There was a momentary increase to 7.2% in the third quarter of\n2017 but growth fell rapidly after this. IBON also pointed out that the growth\nwas slowing even before the budget impasse and election ban on infrastructure\nspending. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Africa added that the economic managers are being deceitful\nin claiming that the 5.1% unemployment rate in April 2019 is the lowest\nunemployment in four decades. He pointed out that the DOF is well aware that the\nchange in the official definition of unemployment in 2005 drastically reduced\nthe reported unemployment rate and number of unemployed which makes the April\n2019 figure incomparable with the 25 years of data before 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the contrary, IBON said, computing according to the\noriginal definition of unemployment for comparability would show that the real unemployment\nrate in 2018 is 10.1% and the real number of unemployed is 4.6 million. These\nare much worse than the already high 9.0% unemployment rate and 4 million\nunemployed in 2016, again computed according to the original definition. In\ncontrast, officially released figures for 2018 were a grossly underreported 5.3%\nand 2.3 million, respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The high unemployment is a direct result of how only an\nannual average of 81,000 new jobs have been created since the start of the Duterte\nadministration, from 41 million employed in 2016 to 41.2 million in 2018. This\nis the worst job generation in the post-Marcos period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Poverty statistics meanwhile show seemingly less poor Filipinos\nonly because of government\u2019s very low poverty threshold, said Africa. The government\u2019s\nPhp69.50 daily per capita poverty threshold and only Php48.60 subsistence or food\nthreshold in the first semester of 2018 are absurdly low and not conceivably\nenough to meet decent minimum standards for food, shelter, transportation,\nhealth care, and education, stressed Africa. He said that this leads to a gross\nunderestimation of the real number of poor Filipinos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally, Africa clarified that it is very deceitful to claim\nthat TRAIN benefited 99% of taxpayers. The Duterte administration wants to make\nit appear that 99% of Filipinos benefited from TRAIN but the truth is that only\n5.5 million personal income taxpayers with tax cuts out of 23 million Filipino\nfamilies gain from TRAIN. The poorest 17.2 million or eight out of 10 Filipino\nfamilies will pay TRAIN\u2019s higher consumption taxes but without any personal\nincome tax gains to offset these. The government is trying to distract the\npublic from how a disproportionate part of TRAIN revenues come from the poorest\nmajority of Filipinos due to additional levies on consumption goods including\npetroleum products and sugar-sweetened beverages, said Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
IBON warned the public to be more discerning about the\ngovernment claims and not to take these at face value. Yet the country can only\nstart to take steps to real solutions when there is more candor and honesty,\nrather than self-serving propaganda, about the real problems the economy and\nthe people face. ###<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Research group IBON said that the Duterte administration is being dishonest in its recent pronouncements about high growth, reducing unemployment, and reducing poverty. The group said that the government is taking liberties with statistics as part of its propaganda campaign that President Duterte is keeping his promise of real change. In its pre-State of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2048,14],"tags":[347,116,2047],"class_list":["post-8376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banner","category-news","tag-duterte-administration","tag-philippine-economy","tag-programs-and-policies","wpautop"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-23 18:18:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8378,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8376\/revisions\/8378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}