The Social Weather Stations (SWS) Second Quarter Survey 2018 found that 9.4% or an estimated 2.2 million families experienced involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months. This is a 0.5-point decrease from the 9.9% families in March 2018.
Despite the slight decrease in the hunger rate found in the SWS Second Quarter Survey 2018, 48% of Filipino families (or about 11.1 million families) considered themselves poor in June 2018. It is a 6-point increase from the 42% in March 2018 and the highest since the 50% in March 2017. Of the 48% families who considered themselves poor, 12% transitioned into poverty. On the other hand, of the 52% Filipino families who consider themselves non-poor, half or 26% transitioned out of poverty. While this may sound good, this is 4 points lower than the 30% Filipino families who considered themselves to have escaped poverty in the previous quarter.
The SWS First Quarter 2018 Survey showed an 8.2-point increase in the adult joblessness rate in the country, from 15.7% (around 7.2 million adults) in December 2017 to 23.9% (around 10.9 million adults). This is one point above the adult joblessness rate of the same period last year.
Under the General Appropriations Act (RA No. 10964) or the 2018 National Budget, signed on December 19, 2017, the social services sector continues to get the biggest allocation at 37.8% or ₱1,425.7 billion of the ₱3.767 trillion budget.
The poor are the hardest hit with the passage of the law on TRAIN 1 given that they do not benefit from the reduction in income tax rates but suffer the consequence of increasing prices of goods (e.g., sugar-sweetened beverages) and services. Although the intent to reduce the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages which are detrimental to health could be achieved, some consumers will continue to buy them and shoulder the higher cost of these products. The impact of price increases to shoppers in supermarkets who belong to the middle and upper classes is lesser and not as immediate compared to the poor or low-income earners who make impulse purchases at the nearby sari-sari It did not help that the release of cash grants by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) was delayed by at least four months and was completed only for the 4Ps beneficiaries. It was also only on June 30, 2018 that the agency started the payout for the senior-citizen beneficiaries.
The poor are also affected by increases in transportation costs and other goods due to an increase in fuel taxes. The impact is most felt by the commuting public as the price hike will affect various modes of transportation such as jeepneys and tricycles. To illustrate, transport groups estimate that the excise taxes may compel jeepney operators to raise their fares by 25%. This would make the fuel excise taxes, in effect, regressive. Moreover, in the absence of fare hikes, drivers of public transportation have been carrying the burden of the increasing fuel prices in the past half of the year. Petitions for fare hike and general oil price rollback are pushed by various transport groups. The Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB), for its part, launched the fuel voucher program (or the Pantawid Pasada Program) for jeepney drivers in July. Under the program, debit cards will be issued to jeepney operators subsidizing them ₱5,000 each, to be distributed over the six months (₱833.33 a month until January). The LTFRB has 179,000 jeepney franchise holders on its list. Transport groups dismiss the program as a “band-aid/short-range solution” to the problem, arguing the possibility that some of the funds will go to corruption, that the fund is not enough to cover the 240,000 jeepney drivers in the country, and that the program once failed during the Aquino administration.
Despite these immediate negative effects of the TRAIN Law to the poor, President Duterte defended it, assuring that social protection measures are in place. The DOF also downplayed the impact of the new tax reform measure, particularly the adjustment on excise taxes and additional levies on certain goods that have contributed partly to increases in consumer prices, affecting the bottom 30% income segment the most.
