NEDA chief bucks further wage hike

MANILA, Philippines – Increasing the minimum wage further would not contribute to the government’s thrust of reducing poverty as layoffs would plunge more workers into unemployment, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary and National Economic and Development Authority director general Ernesto Pernia said yesterday.

“Minimum wage increase tends to be counterproductive as instead of having two incomes in the family, only one (provider) will survive the layoffs,” he said during the briefing on NEDA’s accomplishments in the first 50 days of the Duterte adminstration.

Pernia said this would go against the administration’s goal of creating and sustaining the availability of more jobs in the country to improve the living standards of Filipinos.

“The thrust of the Duterte administration is to create more jobs,” Pernia said. “We also need more investments in healthcare and human capital development.”

To make economic growth more inclusive, government would be focusing on the development of rural areas through greater public investments in infrastructure and implementing reforms on the agriculture sector, the primary livelihood in the provinces, Pernia said.

“NEDA has continued to monitor the status of previous programs on rice and the effects of El Niño to make sure there will be no shortage of food and no spikes in the price of rice, which tend to impact heavily on the poor, and other food items. We have been monitoring rice production and consumption, to determine whether and when to import, given risks of La Niña and other weather disturbances,” Pernia said.

These reforms entails making the agriculture sector more productive through consolidation of agrarian reform lands into viable cultivation areas of scale.

“Agrarian reform has resulted in small parcels of land that are not productive.Consolidating lands will attract more investors who can make farming more viable . We will make use of machineries, not carabaos,” he said.

He said the government would be pursuing a growth path that is more attuned with the needs outside of the capital but without sacrificing the vital developments in Metro Manila.

“Our focus right now is too much on the macroeconomy. The focus now should be on the sub-national level,” said Pernia.

The minimum wage in Metro Manila is currently placed at P491, the combination of P481 basic wage and P10 cost of living allowance (COLA).