P10K monthly budget? NEDA says it's 'hypothetical'

MANILA, Philippines — The National Economic Development Authority on Wednesday clarified that its P10,000 budget which was supposedly enough for a family of five was just hypothetical and used to show the effects of the current inflation rate.

The government agency is under fire after reports came out quoting NEDA that a family of five could live with a P10,000 monthly budget, with labor groups slamming that figure as “insulting” to workers.

NEDA explained that the budget was broken into items commonly consumed by a Filipino household based on the Consumer Price Index from the Philippine Statistics Office.

It then showed the commodities most affected by inflation, which last month stood at a five-year high of 4.6 percent, its causes and the concrete actions the government was taking to cushion its impact.

NEDA also defended the government’s tax reform measure amid calls for its suspension, saying that it had “minimal contribution” to the rise in prices.

“During the June 5 press briefing on the May 2018 inflation report, NEDA showed how a hypothetical monthly budget of Php10,000 will be affected by a 4.6-percent inflation rate,” NEDA said in a statement.

On Tuesday, NEDA released a “hypothetical” sample household budget which showed that P127 was enough to buy the food of a family of five in one day.

Sen. Panfilo Lacson sarcastically agreed with NEDA’s pronouncement that a family of five could survive on a month budget of P10,000.

He said his family could do it if they would eat once a day, wouldn’t brush their teeth and take a bath, walk to and from their workplaces and avoid perspiring for them to not wash their clothes anymore.

“And yes, ask my wife to stop watching her favorite telenovela because I will sell the TV set. Ask my children to throw away their mobile phones so they won't ask me for 'pasa loads,” Lacson said in a statement.

“Actually, we can survive with [P10,000] a month as long as we all stop breathing,” he added.

A labor group condemned the figure which it said was “inaccurate and a grave mistake” and urged the economic planning office to retract its statement and apologize to the public.

“We condemn this argument as inaccurate and a grave mistake. This is an affront to millions of poor Filipinos.,” said Alan Tanjusay, the spokesperson for Associated Labor Unions-Trade Union Congress of the Philippines.

Tanjusay said that the standard set by the figure was very low and stressed that the government should peg it at a modest and acceptable level, which the group said was at P1,200 a day.

The Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research (EILER) also criticized the figure which it described as “misleading and unrealistic” and contradictory to data released by NEDA and PSA before.

EILER said that the monthly poverty threshold of P9,140 was already inadequate for formal and informal workers suffering from penury and rising cost of basic goods.

“Poverty incidence had gone up in the last 10 years and with the implementation of TRAIN law, every Filipino worker should receive a substantial wage increase to cope with higher prices and inflation,” Rochelle Porras, EILER executive director, said.

Militant labor group Kilusang Mayo Uno, meanwhile, is launching a social media campaign to criticize NEDA’s computation, which it said was “fake.”

It is asking Filipinos to post on social networks their monthly household budget to counter NEDA’s claim and to blast it for “deceiving” consumers.

 

This is not the first time the government's economic team got embroiled in controversies over its statements.

 

Just recently, Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno was criticized for saying that Filipinos were "crybabies" for complaining about the rising prices of goods and services.