The government has committed itself in achieving inclusive growth not only through a stable macroeconomic environment but also through increased competitiveness, massive infrastructure investment, transparent and

responsive governance, improved social services, according to the newly released Socioeconomic Report (SER) 2010 to 2012 of the National Economic and Development Authority.

The SER said that the Philippines has shown improvement in terms of its ranking in global competitiveness reports, such as the World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report 2012 to 2013 and the 2011 to 2012 International Finance Corp./World Bank (IFC/WB) Doing Business Report.

The country also hopes to land at the top 30 percent, or at least rank 61 globally in the IFC/WB rating, by the end of the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) period, it noted

The report also stated that competitiveness has cascaded to the local governments, which resulted to the reduced number of procedures to process business permits and licenses to five steps or less.

It now only takes five days for business renewals and not more than 10 days for new business permits to be processed under the streamlined Business Permits and Licensing System, it stated.

The SER added that these developments translate to an average employment generation for the first two years of the Aquino administration at 997,000 a year, which is close to the PDP target of 1 million annually.

“All three broad sectors recorded gains, with services posting the strongest average growth, followed by industry and agriculture, fishery and forestry,” it continued.

However, the report further said that key weaknesses remain in terms of high underemployment rate and the rise in part-time employment.

The October 2012 Labor Force Survey (LFS) of the National Statistics Office estimated that underemployed Filipinos reached 7.2 million, for an underemployment rate of 19 percent.

Infrastructure development
On the other hand, the SER revealed that the country’s infrastructure contributed to the achievement of the higher-level objectives toward inclusive growth such as improved tourism, agriculture and industry performance; improved access to social goods and services; improved environmental quality; and increased resilience to climate change and natural disasters.

“Particularly, the development program of the transport subsector provided and enhanced access to major airports, seaports/roll-on, roll-off ports, markets, production areas, strategic tourist destinations and economic centers throughout the country,” it reported.

The report also cited the good governance strategy under PDP, adding that for the past two years, the Aquino Administration put in place critical reforms to operationalize the Plan’s strategies and lay the foundation for effective and honest governance.

“The government’s firm commitment to transformational leadership has gained support from different sectors of the society and effectively harnessed this to deepen citizen participation in governance,” it further said.

The SER mentioned that this has enabled the Aquino administration to attain initial gains in improving the government’s responsiveness to public needs, strengthening democratic institutions, rebuilding people’s trust in government and enhancing the poor’s access to justice.

The government spending for the social sector increased from 2010 to 2011. With a real gross domestic product share of 5 percent in 2010, it went up to 6 percent in 2011, it disclosed.

“This is expected to increase to 6.1 percent by the end of 2012. Real per capita spending for the sector improved from in 2010 to 2011, and further increased in 2012, resulting in improved access and quality of social services and protection,” the report said.

On improving access to quality health care, the SER noted that the subsector has shown improvements in achieving financial risk protection and the Millennium Development Goals.

The challenges, however, are in sustaining enrollment of the poor and informal sector to social health insurance, improving maternal health, sustaining the gains made on tuberculosis and malaria and halting the increasing number of new HIV/AIDS cases.

On improving access to quality education and training as well as enriching the culture, arts and sports, the subsector has recorded increasing enrollment rates in all levels of education from kindergarten to tertiary, the report stated.

“However, despite efforts to improve the subsector’s performance, there are still major challenges that it has to contend with,” it added.

The SER continued that the main challenge for basic education is on how to deliver basic education services to diverse clientele, while the continuing challenge for technical vocational education and training and higher education is the need to enhance the quality, productivity and global competitiveness of the Filipino workforce.