THE Philippine government must spend $1 billion in 10 years to eliminate malnutrition and sustain the momentum of its economic growth, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).
The economic impact of malnutrition is equivalent to $4.5 billion a year, or 3 percent of GDP annually, according to Unicef Philippines Nutrition Specialist Rene Gerard C. Galera Jr. The amount represents health costs, as well as lost productivity and lost opportunities of the country’s future work force.
“[This is equivalent to] a third of the damages lost to [Supertyphoon] Yolanda. We have to consider that as much as an economic cost, we have to invest in it too,” Galera told reporters in a news briefing at the launch of the State of the World’s Children report in Makati City on Wednesday.
“That’s why it’s actually cheaper to invest in nutrition and you can do so much with [this amount],” he told the BusinessMirror on the sidelines of the event.
The economic losses are only one part of the problem since the quality of the Filipino work force is also at stake. Around 30.3 percent of children are stunted in the Philippines.
Unicef said Filipino kids suffer the “triple burden of malnutrition” that leads to stunting and wasting, a hidden hunger or deficiencies in micronutrients and obesity.
It said stunting could compromise children for life. Once they reach two years old and they have not received ample nutrition, the impact will be irreversible. This means their brain development has not been maximized and this will prevent them from succeeding in school and becoming truly productive workers in the future.
Demographic time bomb
Earlier, economists like former Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Cielito Habito warned that instead of reaping the demographic dividend, the country may have to deal with a “demographic time bomb.”
This, Habito said, will be due to the disadvantaged youth of today who may become incapable of becoming productive workers in the future.
The OIC division chief of the Department of Health (DOH) Disease Prevention and Control Bureau, Anthony P. Calibo, said the government is closely monitoring the nutrition status of Filipino children.
Calibo said the government monitors this through the Department of Education, particularly completion rates and achievement tests. The Department of Labor and Employment can also help through its annual data on human productivity.
“It’s difficult to generalize that the human productivity of the Philippines is actually compromised. [But] if this trend will not be reversed, maybe the next 20 years of adult workers would be the not-so-productive adult workers in the future,” he said.
Earlier, World Bank Program Leader for Human Development Gabriel Demombynes said the Philippines’s investment in human capital has been “historically low” and this has prevented the country from addressing problems, such as stunting.
Demombynes said 1 in 3 Filipino children below five years old are stunted, a ratio that has been unchanged in 10 years. He said the ratio remained at 1 in 3 children in 2015.
Due to this, the Philippines only ranked 84 out of 157 countries in the World Bank’s Human Capital Index (HCI) released last year. The country’s index score was only 0.55, below the average score of 0.61 in the East Asia and the Pacific, and significantly lower than the 0.74 score of high-income countries.
However, Demombynes said if the country meets its human capital targets, as stated in the Philippine Development Plan (PDP), the country’s HCI score could increase to 0.75 by 2022. This translates to a 36-percent growth in future income and the country’s future GDP.