President-elect Marcos’ chief economic manager has high hopes for incoming Socioeconomic Planning Arsenio M. Balisacan, describing the latter as the “poverty guru” of the next administration tasked to bring down the nation’s poverty rate to single-digit.
Incoming Finance Secretary Benjamin E. Diokno said in an interview that the next set of economic managers has an ambitious target of reducing poverty incidence in the Philippines to around 9.5 percent by the end of Marcos’ six-year term.
“You know Arsi is our poverty guru,” Diokno said, referring to Balisacan who will return to the post he held during the President Benigno Simeon Aquino III administration as National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) chief.
Last May 24, Balisacan said he will work with the economic team and the private sector “to bring back the country to its pre-pandemic high-growth trajectory, deliver rapid poverty reduction, and reduce socioeconomic inequality.”
In particular, Balisacan said in an interview with ANC last May 25 that he will focus on boosting the country’s manufacturing sector.
“The lessons of recent history is that if you have a manufacturing sector in the early stages of your development, poverty reduction is so fast and likely sustainable,” Balisancan said.
During the late President Benigno S. Aquino III’s term from 2010 to 2016, poverty incidence had dropped from 26.3 percent to 21.6 percent.
However, the proportion of poor Filipinos jacked up amid the prolonged pandemic from 21.1 percent in 2018 to 23.7 percent in the first semester of 2021.
Diokno said the next administration would reverse the downward trend, and drastically reduce the poverty rate through robust economic growth of at least six percent during Marcos’ leadership.
“Economic growth is very important, if we manage to sustain this pace, it will solve our revenue problem. An economy that is growing would yield a lot of taxes number one. If you solved the revenue, your deficit will of course drop,” Diokno said.
“Since we have lower deficit, we will borrow less money. And then because the economy is growing, we will be able to create a lot of jobs,” he added.
At the minimum, Diokno estimated that the local economy, as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP), will grow by seven percent this year.
Earlier, Marcos said he will maintain continuity in economic policy, noting that his incoming administration will continue work on infrastructure projects in the rail sector under the Duterte administration's flagship "Build, Build, Build" program.