MANILA – While the personal losses of Filipinos due to the typhoons will not “technically” affect the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), these and the global economic crisis will certainly increase the country’s poverty rate in 2009 and make the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on poverty impossible to meet, according to economists.

Former National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) director general Dr. Cielito Habito and University of the Philippines economist Dr. Arsenio Balisacan both said the country may not be able to meet the MDG on poverty, which seeks to reduce poverty and hunger in the Philippines by half by 2015.

This is because the typhoons and global economic crisis could increase the country’s poverty rate to as much as 35 percent in 2009. The government is in the process of conducting the 2009 Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) and poverty statistics which will be released toward the end of 2010.

The FIES and poverty survey, conducted every three years, will certainly be affected by the crisis and the typhoons in the 2009 round. The last FIES and poverty statistics showed that poverty was at 33 percent in 2006, up from 30 percent in 2003.

“Meeting the MDG on poverty is unlikely. Poverty in the Philippines will not show any improvement, if at all. The typhoons and global economic crisis will cause poverty to increase to about 35 percent in 2009,” Habito said at the sidelines of the Philippine Economic Society (PES) 47th Annual Meeting in Pasay City on Friday.

In a brief presentation during the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Plenary Session during the PES Annual Meeting, Balisacan said the Philippines has not altered its state of poverty. In fact, he said that poverty in the last six to seven years “has been bad” and showed more Filipinos thrust into poverty.

Balisacan said the country has been very weak in translating high economic growth into poverty reduction. Consistent with all other macroeconomic factors, the Philippines continues to buck the trend, and as neighboring countries in Asia start to reduce poverty along with achieving higher growth, the country’s poverty level has only worsened through the years.

In fact, Habito said that Vietnam, one of the country’s closest Asian neighbors, has already achieved the MDG on poverty and is already talking about meeting MDG-plus goals.

The MDG-plus agenda is seen to continue meeting global development challenges beyond 2015. This will include higher achievements in the universal indicators that formed part of the MDGs and allow states to add country-specific indicators to make it more responsive to each country’s need.

Balisacan said the biggest challenges the next administration will need to work on to achieve pro-poor growth is promoting good governance and upgrading the quality of institutions.

The former said that by fixing these issues, the next administration will be able to create productive employment opportunities. This will help improve job generation in the country, which is considered one of the biggest reasons the country has not achieved broad-based growth.

For Habito, the next administration should also focus on small and medium enterprises (SMEs). In fact, he believes placing SMEs at the center of the next administration’s development agenda will be crucial.

“The next administration should make SMEs its centerpiece program. This is the concern of the DTI [Department of Trade and Industry], the DA [Department of Agriculture], as well as other government agencies,” Habito said.

Earlier, the United Nations expressed concern that personal losses and damaged assets brought about by typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng will not be included the in the gross domestic product (GDP), the country’s achievement of the MDGs may be the one affected and could face significant setbacks due to these typhoons and other similar tragedies.

With six years to go before the 2015 deadline for the achievement of the MDGs, the United Nations is deeply concerned that the series of natural disasters further threatens development efforts toward the achievement of the goals.

The UN said that even before the typhoons, the Philippines is already behind on its targets to eliminate poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, reducing maternal deaths, and combating HIV and AIDS.

Apart from the actual achievement of the goals, Neda National Development Office Supervising Economic Development specialist Ramon Falcon warned that there is a high possibility that the country’s MDG financing gaps could also increase  due to the effect of the typhoons and the global economic crisis.

Falcon said a study made by Prof. Rosario Manasan, a fellow of the state-owned Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), showed that the country’s MDG resource gap for 2010 to 2015 is in the hundred billions.

Based on the 2007 study released by Manasan, the country’s resource gap for 2010 alone is estimated to be between P91.4 billion and P112.2 billion, or 0.95 percent of GDP to 1.16 percent of GDP. The total resource gap for 2010 to 2015, Manasan said, would amount to P346 billion to P480.8 billion or 0.5 percent of GDP to 0.67 percent of GDP.