Poverty must be addressed

PRESIDENT BS Aquino can proudly claim that these last three years, in the first quarter of 2016, poverty incidence (the percentage of poor people in our population) dropped by 1.6 percent to 26.3 percent. Three years ago, the corresponding figure was 27.9 percent.

This is a great achievement. Especially if one remembers that in April 2013, which was 34 months after PNoy became President of our country, 1.32 million Filipinos became poor and were added to the poverty incidence count. In April three years ago, the population of the Philippines was still below 100 million (it was only 98.6 million then), and more than 27.59 million Filipinos were poor.