DAVAO CITY—This year’s Philippines Development Forum (PDF) has been a productive exchange of ideas that generated a wide range of practical and out-of-the-box proposals on “how to push the poverty alleviation effort” of the Duterte administration, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said today.

Aside from proposals, the government has, through this two-day event, also received numerous offers of strong support for the Duterte administration’s accelerated poverty reduction program from the country’s development partners, Dominguez said.

Dominguez said the inputs gathered during the PDF will be used to craft “two very important” documents—the national budget proposal for 2018 which will be prepared starting June next year, and the Philippine Development Plan for 2017-2022 being completed by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).

The PDF, he said, is truly a “collective and concerted action” that will be replicated in smaller, working group scales in different parts of the country to “put meat in the bones” of President Duterte’s 10-point socioeconomic agenda and ensure that it is responsive to the needs of Filipinos, especially those in the countryside.

Dominguez thanked the stakeholders “for investing their time and energy” in the PDF. “I hope to see many of you once again in the next round of this visioning exercise,” he said in his remarks at the closing session of the PDF held at the SMX Convention Center here.

Dominguez, the chair of the PDF, said the virtual “treasure trove” of constructive ideas, proposals and other inputs that have been gathered from this year’s PDF will be woven into the Philippines’ Development Plan for 2017-2022 that is now being drafted by Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia and the National Economic and Development Authority.

“I began this Forum by calling all hands on deck. Many hands were at work the past two days: those who came to speak and to listen as well as those who worked very hard at the sidelines to make this meeting productive. This Forum did not fail expectations,” Dominguez said.

“The (PDF) Secretariat is sorting out a virtual treasure trove of suggestions and ideas –including some of Gary Teves’ truly practical suggestions on how to win public support for the tax reform program and some out-of-the-box suggestions about how to push the poverty-alleviation effort,” Dominguez said.

He also thanked Albay Rep. Joey for his contribution and active support to the PDF.

“I n addition to the ideas contributed, we have received numerous offers of actual support from our development partners. Our matrices, and soon our cups, runneth over,” he added.
This year’s Forum is the first under the four-month old Duterte administration. The PDF Secretariat observed that this was also the first time that civil society, academe, and the business sector have been very active in taking part in the Forum.

“These have been a productive two days, indeed…And they show the way to a more preferable future,” Dominguez said.

Dominguez recalled that when the Sulong Pilipinas consultative workshop was held last June before the formal assumption of President Duterte to the presidency, it was the first time that an incoming administration consulted the business sector, the development partner community, and other groups on its proposed reform agenda.

He said the positive response to the Sulong was a “validation and acceptance of the 10-point socioeconomic agenda,” and its inputs were used to “tweak” the proposed budget for 2017.

Some 400 stakeholders took part in the two-day forum, including representatives from the national and local governments, civil society organizations, the academe, development partners such as the World Bank, World Health Organization (WHO), International Finance Corp. (IFC), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Spanish Agency for International Development (AECID), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the various United Nations organizations, Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbelt (GIZ), Asian Development Bank (ADB), and the embassies of Australia, China, Canada, Spain, and the European Union.

Following the plenary discussions on the first day, the stakeholders organized themselves into “breakout” groups based on the major themes of the President’s 10-point socioeconomic agenda.

These “breakout” groups tackled 1) macroeconomic and fiscal policies, which include the proposed tax reform program of the Department of Finance (DOF); 2) peace and development initiatives in Mindanao; 3) infrastructure and competitiveness, which include the development of science and technology, building an efficient transport network and improving the ease of doing business; 4) rural development, which include land administration and management and food security; and the 5) development of human capital, which include social protection programs for the poorest of the poor and the implementation of the reproductive health law.

In his welcome remarks last Tuesday as chair of the PDF, Dominguez said the first such forum under the present administration will be the start of a string of “detailed, practicable and meaningful” annual fora—and possibly even smaller, intermittent—meetings on the Duterte watch, which are all geared to find ways on how to transform high growth into a truly inclusive one for all Filipinos.

Dominguez said the PDF was able to come up with a series of initiatives that would be incorporated into the Philippines’ Development Plan for 2017-2022 now being completed by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), which focuses on accelerated spending on infrastructure, human capital development and social protection for the poorest of the poor, as well as programs conducive to attracting fresh investments in businesses.

He said that unless the Duterte administration takes the lead with the other stakeholders in mounting concerted actions to attain inclusive growth and create enough jobs for the people, the Philippines might miss its only opportunity to become a high-income economy in a generation.

According to Dominguez, “the overarching goal of this administration’s reform program is the reduction of poverty by about 8 percent over the medium term.”

“The reduction of poverty will be made possible by maintaining an annual GDP growth rate of at least 7 percent. The high growth rate will not be enough if it is not inclusive. We have seen in the past few years that our economy, while posting healthy growth, made the rich richer and the poor poorer,” Dominguez has said.

It was also here in Davao City that the then-incoming economic team of President Duterte convened the two-day Sulong Pilipinas workshop with the various sectors last June to draw up its 10-point socioeconomic agenda.