OECD takes Philippine hype down a peg
The Paris-based Organisation of Economic Cooperation and the Development, a rich club of nations, has reported that the Philippines – despite its unexpectedly high 6.6 per cent GDP growth in 2012 – faces long-term challenges that could throw it off track.
According to the organisation’s report titled “Southeast Asian Economic Outlook 2013,” the Philippines must focus on debilitating issues of lagging productivity and crippling poverty otherwise the country could even be overtaken by less strong economies in ASEAN.
The OECD report revealed that a Filipino worker accounted for $10,000 worth of products valued in 2009 prices, a measurement of output of goods and services that is barely above Indonesia’s level and below the ASEAN average.
Under this metric, the Philippines, one of the five founding members of ASEAN, ranks fourth behind its ASEAN-5 peers in terms of productivity.
Even more harrowing, the Philippines suffers from the highest poverty incidence rate of the ASEAN-5 with almost a quarter of the population living below the poverty threshold (about $1.5 a day), which is almost the same as Indonesia.
Among the tools that the Philippine government is readying to fight poverty is the deployment of a universal healthcare scheme. Many Filipinos spend large portions of their earnings on healthcare, and there are only about 1.3 physicians per 1,000 people in the Philippines.
According to a statement made by the country’s National Statistical Coordination Board at the end of 2012, more than half of the Philippines’ expenditure for healthcare “came from the pockets of households” in 2010.
[caption id="attachment_7939" align="alignleft" width="240"] Almost a quarter of the Philippine population lives below the poverty line.[/caption] The Paris-based Organisation of Economic Cooperation and the Development, a rich club of nations, has reported that the Philippines – despite its unexpectedly high 6.6 per cent GDP growth in 2012 – faces long-term challenges that could throw it off track. According to the organisation’s report titled "Southeast Asian Economic Outlook 2013," the Philippines must focus on debilitating issues of lagging productivity and crippling poverty otherwise the country could even be overtaken by less strong economies in ASEAN. The OECD report revealed that a...
The Paris-based Organisation of Economic Cooperation and the Development, a rich club of nations, has reported that the Philippines – despite its unexpectedly high 6.6 per cent GDP growth in 2012 – faces long-term challenges that could throw it off track.
According to the organisation’s report titled “Southeast Asian Economic Outlook 2013,” the Philippines must focus on debilitating issues of lagging productivity and crippling poverty otherwise the country could even be overtaken by less strong economies in ASEAN.
The OECD report revealed that a Filipino worker accounted for $10,000 worth of products valued in 2009 prices, a measurement of output of goods and services that is barely above Indonesia’s level and below the ASEAN average.
Under this metric, the Philippines, one of the five founding members of ASEAN, ranks fourth behind its ASEAN-5 peers in terms of productivity.
Even more harrowing, the Philippines suffers from the highest poverty incidence rate of the ASEAN-5 with almost a quarter of the population living below the poverty threshold (about $1.5 a day), which is almost the same as Indonesia.
Among the tools that the Philippine government is readying to fight poverty is the deployment of a universal healthcare scheme. Many Filipinos spend large portions of their earnings on healthcare, and there are only about 1.3 physicians per 1,000 people in the Philippines.
According to a statement made by the country’s National Statistical Coordination Board at the end of 2012, more than half of the Philippines’ expenditure for healthcare “came from the pockets of households” in 2010.
