Top Bicol Concerns for 2025: Poverty and Flooding

If I had to volunteer my thoughts, what are the top problems that most Bicolanos face and would want to mitigate or find decisive positive actions done for the year of the Wooden Snake, 2025? I would write these two: 1) poverty and 2) flooding.

This means that if we are to believe the statistics, these two have been a scourge in the lives of most Bicola in the last year. So, to wish them a truly “happy and prosperous new year,” anything that would help ease and lighten their burden from these issues is the best pogi point for development planners and decision makers to accomplish.

As 2023 ended, inflation shot up to 2.9% from 2.5% in just one month from November, according to a year-end report from the Philippine Statistic Authority. For the country’s government economic managers, who briefed the President last Monday, January 6, the expectation was that inflation would go low by December. It did not, but the rise is still within the Central Bank targets and “heading for a stronger position in 2025.”

However, the President warned, “We should still be prepared.” Prof. Noel Leyco, an economist at a non-government think tank, the Center for People Empowerment in Governance, agrees; the signs are disturbing. The stock market reacted negatively, too.

For most Filipinos, high inflation translates to higher prices of goods and services and, for the wealthy, less than one percent less value for their stocks. Food inflation is worse: It is 4.4% higher than the overall inflation of 2.9%, and the impact is great not only for the poor but for all suppliers, buyers, and consumers alike.

The bottom population suffers most because their purchasing power is low, and food prices, especially rice and vegetables, are already beyond reach. The cost of tomatoes, cabbage, and onions has increased to 213 pesos in 2024 from 64 pesos a kilo in 2023! Agricultural products, which farmers, the poorest sector produce, continue to soar.

Like the rest of the country, poverty is a top concern in Bicol. A quarter of the population combined are below the poverty level, are still in search of jobs, unable to complete school and gain access to good health care. Many are still poor. For example, NEDA cited that in 2023, the poverty threshold in Sorsogon reached Php 14,321, compared to Php 13,990 for the Bicol Region, marking the most significant gap in the two years. This suggests that families in Sorsogon demand higher income than the regional average to cover basic needs like clothing and footwear; fuel, light, and water; housing maintenance and other minor repairs; rental of occupied dwelling units; medical care; education; transportation & communication.

The new year forecast is: prices will remain unstable and not enough jobs to sustain families, especially with new graduates coming in and out yearly.

A most telling aggravating problem in Bicol is coping with climate change: flooding caused by constant typhoons, hefty rain downpours, and other environmental hazards. Kristine, in 2024, provides a ___ on what to expect more in 2025 and the years ahead with no effective action plan to reduce risks. Flooding is among the most prevalent natural hazards, with disastrous impacts on everyone in low-lying communities and poor regions like Bicol.

A global study shows that the number of people exposed to high flood risks directly interacts with poverty. Worldwide, 1.81 billion people (23% of the world’s population) are directly exposed to 1-in-100-year floods. Of these, 1.24 billion are located in South and East Asia, including in the Philippines, where Bicol is one of the most disaster-prone. Bicol is home to one of the country’s flood-exposed populations.

If we wish for a happy and prosperous new year, it may be time for our economic planners to strategize a shift in the country’s development paradigm in the past decades. The Philippines has not had a sustainable economy despite substantial budget allocations for every development area in the past many administrations. It depends so much on who is at the helm of government!

New Year resolutions

If I may venture into seeking out remedies or solutions, it is critical to identify the main contributors to poverty and flooding. In many studies, the culprits are not always beyond control: inefficiency and corruption. The problem is within us, within the decision makers, the planners, and the system put in place.

NEDA introduced its so-called targeted interventions last year to address the 27.5 % poverty incidence among the Bicol population. Despite these commendable achievements, NEDA 5 acknowledges that the region has “yet to meet the target set in the Bicol Regional Development Plan 2023-2028, which aims for a poverty incidence of 18.0 percent by the end of 2028.

The experiences of many countries that have contributed to eradicating or significantly reducing the number of poor people in their countries, like China, Brazil, and Denmark, are challenging. Industrialization, people empowerment, social enterprises, and food production are common resolutions to their successful poverty programs.

These might as well be part of Bicol’s New Year’s resolutions for development.