Some 300 from the national government, local government units (LGUs), the country’s development partners, civil society and other sectors are expected to gather in Davao City next week to take part in this year’s Philippines Development Forum (PDF), the primary mechanism of the government in facilitating substantive policy dialogues on its five-year reform agenda.

The inputs from the participants in this year’s PDF will be incorporated in the five-year Philippine Development Plan now being completed by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), according to Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III.

Dominguez chairs the PDF consultative dialogue on Nov. 8-9 and Secretary Jesus Dureza of the peace process is his co-chairperson.

The Five-Year Philippine Development Plan will outline the Duterte administration’s strategy in sustaining high growth and making its benefits felt by all Filipinos through accelerated spending in infrastructure, human capital development and social protection for the poorest of the poor.

With the theme “Poverty Reduction through the Vigorous Implementation of the 10-point Socioeconomic Agenda,” this year’s PDF will be held at the SMX Convention Center in Lanang, Davao City.

Dominguez said this two-day forum will gather representatives from the national government, LGUs, the development partner community, civil society, academe, the Congress, business sector and other stakeholders.

The PDF evolved from the Consultative Group meetings held every 18 months among the government and its international development partners, such as the World Bank and other global financial institutions.

In 2004, while planning for the 2005 Consultative Group meeting, the government and the World Bank agreed to widen the participation of the forum by bringing in other stakeholders such as civil society, the private sector, academe and legislative representatives to join the dialogue.

Following this agreement, the Consultative Group meeting was restructured as an ongoing forum for dialogue and the PDF process was launched.

The last PDF formal meeting was held on Feb. 2013, also in Davao City, with around 300 participants from government, international development partners, and other stakeholders.

Dominguez said the forum offers business groups and other organizations such the Makati Business Club, “that also has been asking for an audience with the President,” the opportunity to take part in the dialogue and air their views on how best to sustain and achieve inclusive growth.

“The Department of Finance is holding a Philippine Development Forum in Davao City onNovember 8 and 9 and I would like to invite all these groups to participate in the forum because there they can air their concerns and we can discuss the future direction of our country,” Dominguez said.

Dominguez said the Philippines’ development partners, such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and other global financial institutions, along with civil society groups and representatives of foreign governments, are also invited to participate in the two-day forum.

“In this forum….we can all discuss with the international and the local community the direction of the Philippine economy,” he said.

The PDF will tackle the following priorities: 1) macroeconomic and fiscal policies, including the DOF’s proposed tax reform program; 2) peace and development in Mindanao; and 3) infrastructure and competitiveness, including the development of science and technology, building an efficient transport network and improving the ease of doing business.

These priorities also cover 4) rural development, including land administration and management and food security; and the 5) development of human capital, including social protection programs for the poorest of the poor and the implementation of the reproductive health law.

Davao City was also the venue for the “Sulong Pilipinas Tungo sa Kaunlaran” consultative workshop organized by then-incoming Secretary Dominguez last June 20-21, ahead of the formal assumption to the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte to help the new Administration draw up the correct metrics or standards to later on measure whether Government has been meeting its socio-economic targets and, more importantly, whether such have been beneficial to poor and low-income families.

Dominguez has welcomed the decline in poverty incidence to 21.6 percent, saying this is the cue for the government to “work doubly hard” on its 10-point socioeconomic agenda to hit President Duterte’s target of reducing the number of poor Filipinos by 1.5 percent of the population annually over the next six years.

He said that slashing the poverty rate from almost 22 percent to just 13 percent by 2022 remains “doable,” but it will require “the Duterte administration to work doubly hard on fleshing out programs of the 10-point socioeconomic agenda that would boost growth and generate enough jobs and livelihood opportunities nationwide as a way to raise incomes for the poor to meet their food and non-food needs. At the same time, food prices need to be managed so that it does not eat up income growth.”

“President Duterte’s poverty-reduction target remains doable, but it will entail pursuing with greater vigor the accelerated spending on labor-intensive infrastructure to boost growth as well as on human capital formation like education and health, so poor Filipinos can have better access to quality jobs and livelihood opportunities,” he said.

“A drastic reduction in the country’s poverty incidence as envisioned by the President has become more challenging, as this will require improving the living standards of the poorest-of-the-poor families instead of just uplifting the lives of those on the fringes of the poverty line,” said Dominguez in reaction to the latest Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) released last week by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) pointing to the decline in the poverty rate from 26.3 percent in 2009 to last year’s 21.6 percent.

“The government’s focus should be on the countryside as the severely poor are mostly in rural areas,” said Dominguez, who once served as agriculture secretary.

“This also means that we have to pursue tax reforms in the Congress without letup,” he said, “so the Duterte administration can generate enough revenues to bankroll both the pro-poor and business-friendly programs of the 10-point socioeconomic agenda on inclusive growth.”