Despite posting nearly a million net job losses last year, the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) remains confident that the Philippines is on track to becoming a high-income country by 2040.
At a news briefing on Tuesday, Neda Undersecretary Rosemarie G. Edillon said the country may hit its goal of becoming an upper middle- income country by next year, three years ahead of target.
Edillon said a major indication of this is that the country’s gross national income (GNI) per capita increased by 6.5 percent, significantly higher than the 4.8-percent target.
“The implication for that is it means our vision of being a high-income country by 2040 is really within reach,” Edillon said.
“Actually the target for the PDP [Philippine Development Plan] is that we will be an upper middle-income country by 2022. But we think we will get to that status much, much earlier,” she added.
The Philippines is considered a lower middle-income country with a per capita GNI of around $3,500 as of 2016.
The World Bank said lower middle-income economies, like the Philippines, have a GNI per capita ranging between $1,026 and $4,035.
As of 2016, the World Bank said low-income economies are defined as those with a GNI per capita, calculated using the World Bank Atlas method, of $1,025 or less in 2015.
Upper middle-income economies are those with a GNI per capita between $4,036 and $12,475, while high-income economies are those with a GNI per capita of $12,476 or more.
However, achieving a high-income status requires providing employment opportunities. In 2017 the country recorded a net job loss of 663,243.
Edillon said the job losses were mostly seen in agriculture, and many of these individuals were young people who were able to go back to school through the government’s conditional-cash transfer program.
Providing jobs will be a priority of the administration, which will be generated through the “Build, Build, Build” (BBB) program.
The government, Neda Undersecretary for Investment Programming Rolando G. Tungpalan said the agency is already in the process of determining the number of jobs created by each of the 40 projects approved by the Duterte administration since June 2016.
Tungpalan added, however, that Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto M. Pernia earlier said the government hopes to create 1.1 million jobs from the BBB program between 2017 and 2022.
“The job count is really one of the things we’re looking at,” Tungpalan said. “The actual projects that have been approved by the Neda Board under the Duterte administration, our running count is about 40 over P1.4 trillion.”
This month DPWH Secretary Mark A. Villar told the BusinessMirror said the national government is embarking on a hiring spree to increase the number of technical personnel needed to implement the BBB.
Villar said this will be done through the “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs” program, which will be undertaken with the Department of Finance and other key agencies. The program aims to match the skills of returning overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) with the manpower needs for the BBB program.
Being able to attract returning OFWs augurs well for the quality of BBB projects. Villar said major infrastructure undertakings abroad, such as in Saudi Arabia, were mainly done by Filipinos.
He added returning to the Philippines is an option for OFWs, especially now that the government is open to offer them competitive salary rates.
In the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) alone, Villar said the agency is adding seven more lawyers in each regional office, as well as hiring at least 3,000 more engineers to implement the BBB.
Previously, Villar said, there were only two lawyers per DPWH office and only 10,000 engineers in the agency nationwide.