Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
At the opening ceremonies of the 5th Asian and Pacific Ministerial Conference on Social Development

[Delivered at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC), Manila, November 10, 1997]

Social development
in the Asia-Pacific

WE ARE HERE TODAY not to begin a program—but to search for ways to speed up the achievement of our goals. Many of you will remember that it was also in this hall where we first drew up the Manila Declaration on Social Development in the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) region and the corresponding Agenda for Action on Social Development in 1994.

At the time, the senior officials and the ministers had to work overtime to complete the declaration and agenda for action, which reflected the common vision of three-fifths of humanity spread across the 54 countries represented here.

The same declaration and action agenda were carried all the way to the World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995, during which I articulated the concerns of the Asia-Pacific and of the developing countries (or Group 77). And when we now carefully review the Copenhagen Declaration and Program of Action, we can justifiably claim that we have integrated our Regional Social Development Agenda with the World Social Development Agenda.

Today, in this conference, we survey the extent of the ESCAP region’s implementation of the Regional Social Development Agenda.

Three years of progress

Turmoil and uncertainty grip many countries in our region today, and a new shadow hangs upon the economic miracle that has made Asia-Pacific the most dynamic region in the world.

This does not diminish the fact that over the past few years, we have—severally and together—made substantial progress in social development.

The region’s economic dynamism during this final decade of the 20th century has not only raised many countries to the threshold of economic modernization; it has also manifestly improved the well-being of our millions.

Poverty incidence has been dramatically reduced in many countries and, just as important, health levels have improved across the board—enhancing the efficiency, productivity and quality of labor in many economies.

The old notion of our region’s vast population as a burden that would hamper the future of our countries has been turned around, and the new wisdom is that people—their youth, their energy and their numbers—underpin the great adventure of development in our part of the world.

And when the anxieties of the present passes over-as I am convinced they will—it will again be our people, on all sides of the Pacific, who will lift us to heights of social and economic progress in the 21st century.

Each country brings to this conference its own unique experience in carrying out the objectives of ESCAP’s Social Development Agenda. And what each of us has to report will no doubt enrich our common fund of knowledge in the quest for social development-helping us to better understand the problems and to perform more effectively in the future.

In this spirit then, allow me to provide you with a brief perspective of our work here in the Philippines.

The Philippine experience

In support of the Regional Social Development Agenda, we have geared our policies and programs toward dealing with poverty unemployment and underemployment, social inequity, and family disunity. This is clearly articulated in our “Philippines 2000” program and in our Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan for 1992-98. Given the context and situation where we started from, we have great reason to be encouraged that our human development strategy is working and continues to forge onward.

We have reduced poverty from 40 percent in 1991 to 34 percent in 1996.

We also have a more healthy population, as life expectancy has been raised from 66.6 years in 1993 to 69.4 years in 1997. Our infant mortality rate has also significantly decreased from 52.0 per 1,000 live births in 1993 to 45.8 in 1997, while our crude deathrate decreased from 69 per 1,000 population in 1993 to 63 per 1,000 population in 1997.

Rising employment has come hand in hand with our economic recovery and growth during the past four years. The unemployment rate dropped from 9.8 percent in 1992 to 8.6 percent in 1996, to 7.7 percent as of the first semester of 1997, even as more jobs have been generated at the rate of more than a million a year.

Access to the knowledge industry

In education—to which we of the Philippines have historically always attached much importance—we have vigorously widened access to skills upgrading, to education services, to culture and to the knowledge industry. Our elementary participation rate increased from 85.2 percent in school year 1993-94 to 94.3 percent in school year 1996-97. High-school participation rate in turn has risen from 56.6 percent to 62.6 over the same period.

At the same time, we have been providing a policy environment conducive to popular participation in public affairs, in community development, in nation building. We have institutionalized participation of our non-Government organizations and people’s organizations in policymaking bodies such as the Philippine Council for Sustainable Development, which is our institutional mechanism for carrying out the Agenda 21 commitments.

In other international commitments, we have also provided for social participation in the Multisectoral Committee on International Human Development Commitments, which is under the social development committee of the National Economic and Development Authority board.

This is our main mechanism for coordinating and monitoring the implementation of the commitments made during the 1995 World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen, the 1994 Manila Conference, the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994, the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, and the Second International Conference on Shelter and Human Settlements in Istanbul in 1996.

All these have given Philippine society a conducive environment for socioeconomic participation. For we believe that it is only through working hand in hand with our development partners—the non-Government organizations, people’s organizations, cooperatives, leaders of the private sector and the rest of civil society—that our development goals will be attained.

Greater role for Local Government

We have also provided mechanisms to encourage a greater development role for our Local Government units. Through our 1992 Local Government Code, we have enabled lower levels of government to set priorities and decide matters in their own spheres of competence through a combination of consultative, legislative and executive mechanisms. To ensure the Local Government units’ absorptive capacity, we are continuously undertaking efforts at capability building.

Finally, we have put in place a nationwide social reform program known as the Social Reform Agenda (SRA). Our target population groups for our SRA are farmers, fisherfolk, indigenous people, workers, the urban poor and members of various vulnerable groups such as children, youth, women, the elderly and the disabled. The other core areas are institution building and effective participation in government, improvement of access to credit and increasing livelihood opportunities.

In line with our SRA, we have convened several national consultative summits to deal with specific areas of concern. Among them are the Employment Summit in October 1995, the National Antipoverty Summit in March 1996, the National Productivity Summit in September 1996 and the recently concluded Antidrugs Summit.

Improving the human development index

Ranged with the rest of the world, the human development index of the Philippines has improved over time from 0.56 in 1980 to 0.68 in 1994, as shown by the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report. When the new measurements are made, we expect the index to improve further during the past three years because of our all-out effort to carry out basic social development programs.

In relation to this, the Human Development Report cited the Philippines for setting the pace for gender equality and women empowerment and development among the ASEAN countries. This part of the index examines whether women and men are able to actively participate in our economic and political life, and take part in decision-making.

Women continue to have an inadequate and inequitable say in development as shown by the following female composition of the higher decision-making positions in 1995:17 percent in the Senate; 10 percent in the House of Representatives; 35 percent of the Cabinet; 12 percent of the governors and 8 percent of the mayors throughout the country. But the women and most of the men are working hard at this—including myself.

Roadblocks and problems

In enumerating all this, I do not want to leave you with the impression that our work in social development is proceeding without a hitch. There are many problems, issues and challenges we are facing today.

The pace for improvement in some areas may not be fast enough to achieve our international commitments. For instance, while it is likely that we will meet our interim target of bringing down poverty incidence to 30 percent in 1998, it is another thing to say whether we can eradicate absolute poverty by the year 2010.

In the area of financing human development, resources, even with the support of a more energized private sector, remain inadequate.

In the area of employment generation, for the period 1991-95, for every 100 new jobs created, about 119 new entrants were competing for them. Around 2.5 million workers remain unemployed yearly. This inadequacy of jobs is one of the reasons for the migration of skilled Filipino workers abroad. Some four million of our people work overseas in 130 to 135 countries.

Our experience only goes to show that there is no magic bullet to slay the poverty challenge and other social problems facing developing countries like the Philippines. Changes and reforms are not achieved overnight; they are achieved step by step. And programs must be designed well and carefully carried out through political will and collective effort.

What should hearten us is that some progress is being made in this country and across the entire Asia-Pacific.

We all have a clearer picture of what must be done: a more conducive policy and program implementation environment, and greater access to human development opportunities and services, including those that may be afforded from non-Government services.

We also know better the inadequacy of resources for human development in the context of the 20:20 initiative and the still far-from-satisfactory access to social services, especially of women and children.

To meet the problems and challenges more effectively, we need to raise consciousness for the needs of social development to the forefront of our concerns as nations—equal in urgency and attention to political stability and economic growth.

Unity and resolve

I join my voice with others therefore in urging the regional and global community to devote more resources to priority social development programs to attain the 20:20 compact of development. At national level, I enjoin our governments to continuously increase spending for human development priorities.

This Fifth Asian and Pacific Ministerial Conference on Social Development is a grand opportunity for us to renew our resolve to deal with the challenge together—and to collectively redeem our solemn commitments so eloquently expressed in the 1995 Agenda for Action on Social Development.

To the global community, let us present a picture of unity and resolve: that we of ESCAP will collectively deal with the human development challenge in our countries and throughout our region, and that we will not rest until we have secured a better future for our peoples and our societies.

This is our work today and in the days ahead.