7 of 10 poorest provinces in South
By Manuel T. Cayon
Reporter
DAVAO CITY-Seven of Mindanao’s poor provinces crowd the list of 10 poorest provinces in the country, underpinning the slow development work or lack of attention to uplift the South.
The 2003 Official Poverty Statistics, the latest report on the country’s poverty situation posted by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), said Zamboanga del Norte in Western Mindanao was the country’s poorest, with poverty incidence of 64.6 percent.
The national incidence is 24 percent.
The province was joined on the blighted list by the other Mindanao provinces Maguindanao (60.4 percent), Surigao del Norte (54.5 percent), Agusan del Sur (52.8 percent), Surigao del Sur (48.6 percent), Misamis Occidental (48.1 percent) and Lanao del Norte (46.5 percent).
Poverty incidence refers to the proportion of families or individuals who have incomes lower than the poverty threshold, versus the total number of families or individuals of the same given province or area.
Region 9, or Western Mindanao and the Caraga Regions, have most of their provinces in the list. The Zamboanga peninsula has Zamboanga del Norte and Misamis Occidental on the list; only one of the four Caraga provinces, Agusan del Norte, was not on the list. This region is in the northeastern part of Mindanao and embraces the two Agusan provinces and the two Surigao provinces. The Dinagat Island group was poised to become Caraga’s fifth province.
The Mindanao lineup was broken only by Masbate, the third poorest with a poverty incidence of 55.9 percent, Mountain Province is in the No. 8 rung (46.7 percent) and Biliran Province, in the ninth rung (46.5 percent).
An improvement was shown by the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), which has most of its five provinces and one city in previous editions of poverty lists. The region has only Maguindanao on the list now: its other provinces like Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Basilan and Lanao del Sur having been pulled up from the cellar by the concentration of official development aid to the region.
Sulu used to be in the doldrums but its graduation from the list was already noticed in 2003 when the Mindanao Economic Development Council (Medco) came up with a situation report that year on Mindanao’s state of poverty and human security. Sulu graduated from the list in 2000, along with Lanao del Sur.
The ARMM could be an inspiration on how to draw up a resuscitation list to pull these provinces up. Medco cited the big contribution of the local chief executives and their decision to agree to put up transparent governance and accountability mechanisms.
The ODA factor has helped largely in putting up professional local government management. The ARMM obtained 46 percent of the total ODA funds going to Mindanao, with P1.325 billion in 2006.
The poverty list also indicated an improvement in the number of families living below poverty level, with about 124,000 families bailed out from very dire straits.
The NSCB said the statistics it culled last year showed that 24 in every 100 Filipino families “did not earn enough in 2003 to satisfy their basic food and nonfood requirement”. The NSCB said, however, that this was an improvement in 2000 when there were 28 families in every 100 families which suffered below the poverty threshold.
The agency said there was a 3.1-percent difference in the two study periods covered, 2000 and 2003, and would translate to 124,000 families.
The annual per capita poverty income threshold in 2003 was pegged at P12,309. The government has pegged this year’s household monthly income to reach P6,195 for a family of five.
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