DAVAO CITY—The Duterte administration’s priority initiatives under its 10-point socioeconomic agenda to significantly cut poverty incidence over the next five years and make high growth not only sustainable but also felt by all Filipinos will be presented to the country’s development partners, the business community, civil society groups and other sectors when the Philippines Development Forum (PDF) begins here this Tuesday.

The 10th PDF, which is the first under the Duterte administration, will be held at the SMX Convention Center here for two days to reach consensus and forge collective action from various stakeholders on the effective implementation of President Duterte’s 10-point socioeconomic agenda.

The inputs from the PDF participants will be incorporated in a plan of action under the Philippine Development Plan for 2017-2022, which is the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) is now crafting.

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III executives from the Philippines’ development partners like the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank plus other global financial institutions, along with leaders of civil society groups and representatives of foreign governments, are expected to join some 300 participants in the two-day Forum.

“The Department of Finance (DOF) is holding a Philippine Development Forum in Davao City on November 8 and 9and 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 told a press briefing last week.

Dominguez chairs the two-day forum and Secretary Jesus Dureza of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) is his co-chairperson.

With the theme “Poverty Reduction through the Vigorous Implementation of the 10-Point Socioeconomic Agenda, the forum will focus on five priority areas of concern.

These are the [1] the Philippines’ macroeconomic and fiscal policies, which includes the comprehensive tax reform program proposed by the DOF and the spending strategy of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM); and [2] infrastructure and competitiveness, which covers infra investments, steps to revitalize the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) program, development of science and technology, building an efficient transport network and improving the ease of doing business;

The other priority areas for discussion are [3] rural development, which includes land administration and management, food security and the participation of the local government units (LGUs) in developing the countryside; [4] human capital development, which covers education, health care and social protection for the poorest for the poor, along with promoting responsible parenthood and implementing the Reproductive Health Law; and [5] Mindanao, which includes the OPAPP’s presentation of its six-point peace and development roadmap for the region.

Dominguez is scheduled to deliver the welcome remarks at the PDF’s opening session on Tuesday morning, which will be followed by an opening statement by Dureza.

The plenary session of the PDF will commence with NEDA’s presentation of how it envisions to translate the 10-point reform agenda into a plan of action through the PDF 2017-2022.

The NEDA will take into account the results of the earlier Sulong Pilipinas dialogues with the business community, civil society, LGUs and champions of climate change.

The two-day Sulong Pilipinas: Hakbang Tungo sa Kaunlaran forum was organized by Dominguez and held, also in Davao City, last June 20-21, ahead of Mr. Duterte’s formal assumption of the presidency.

After the presentation, the members of the Cabinet will preside over the plenary discussions of the government’s overall development programs to reduce poverty and ensure inclusive growth.

The plenary session will be followed by the “breakout” sessions, where participants will be grouped according to the PDF’s five priority areas of concern.

On the second day of the Forum, the plenary session will reconvene for the presentation of the reports and recommendations threshed out during the previous day’s breakout sessions.

Dureza will open the final session while Dominguez will report the highlights of the previous days’ proceedings.

As part of the proposed priority programs under the PDF, the DOF is working on a Comprehensive Tax Reform Program to help ensure the financial sustainability of the new government’s accelerated spending on infrastructure, human capital and social protection.

The DOF has already submitted to the Congress the first package of this tax plan, which includes cuts in personal income taxes primarily for the benefit of wage earners and other low-income Filipinos, along with measures to offset the projected revenue losses from the lower tax rates, like adjusting the fuel excise tax and automobile tax, and broadening the Value Added Tax (VAT) base by removing certain exemptions.

Through the comprehensive tax plan, the DOF aims to lay the ground for Government to spend an extra P1 trillion per year so it can meet the President’s vision of transforming the Philippines into an upper middle-income economy by the end of his term in 2022 and into a high income economy in one generation or by 2040.

Chaired by the DOF, the PDF serves as the primary mechanism for facilitating policy dialogues among all stakeholders, including the national government and local government units (LGUs), business sector, the development partner community, the academe and civil society organization, on the Government’s development agenda.

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

Dominguez earlier 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.

“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.

Dominguez said the DOF will study the 2015 FIES of the PSA to see if it needs to finetune the figures in its Comprehensive Tax Reform Program, the first package of which was already submitted to both legislative chambers last September.

Finance Undersecretary Karl Kendrick Chua, the DOF’s chief economist, echoed Dominguez’s view that reducing the poverty incidence from 22 percent to 13 percent is “doable but more challenging as it is easier to uplift those near the poverty line, which the previous government did than those who are severely poor, which is the task of the Duterte government.”