By John Mark Escandor
NAGA CITY, Jan. 19 (PNA) — Quality employment remains to be a big challenge for the Bicol Region even as it earned important milestones in 2014 in some areas like the regional economic growth of 9.4 percent attained in 2013 and the recognition of Naga City and Daet town as among the most competitive cities and municipalities, respectively by the National Competitive Council last year, a National Economic Development Administration’s (NEDA) report said.
Amid the constant challenges of the effect of climate change and being “prone to external shocks brought about by volatile global market,” Bicol faces the challenge of generating quality employment to significantly reduce poverty incidence, according to the report submitted to the House special committee on Bicol recovery and economic development (HSCBRED).
Neda Regional Director Agnes Espina defined quality employment as a job that is paying high enough to provide for all the needs of the family.
“So if you are in a job but you are still looking for an additional or a higher paying job, you are underemployed. Although Bicol has a lower unemployment rate than the rest of the country, (it) has the highest underemployment rate. That means that 34.3 percent of the employed persons in Bicol are still looking for additional jobs,” Espina explained in the report.
Latest data from the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) showed that in January 2014 more Bicolanos were out of job with the drop in the employment rate by 1.7 percent from the same period in 2013.
In the same period, the total labor force (15 years old and over) was placed at 3.9 million.
The NSCB noted that underemployment rate, or the proportion of employed persons wanting more hours of work to total number of employed, accelerated by 9-percentage points in January 2014 compared to January 2013 throughout Bicol.
NSCB data showed Bicol Region registering the highest underemployment rate at 44 percent in January last year among the regions of the country, with Region II (Cagayan Valley) recording the lowest at 10.1 percent.
Espinas, in her report, said more needs to be done in terms of translating economic growth to significant poverty reduction because the region was not able to sustain its high growth rate in the period 2009 to 2012.
She noted that in that case, the “reduction of poverty rate is insignificant and is still very much higher than the country’s overall average.”
“Despite the high economic growth of 6.9 percent and 9.4 percent in 2012 and 2013, Bicol’s share to the country’s economic pie is only 2 percent,” Espinas stressed.
The NSCB data showed that Bicol Region’s poverty incidence has consistently declined based on their survey in 2006, 2009 and 2012 which yielded a poverty incidence of 48 percent, 35.4 percent and 35.3 percent, respectively.
This means that for every 100 families 48 families were poor in 2006 but it remained the same in 2009 and 2012 at 35 poor families in every 100 families throughout the region.
At present, Bicol’s economy is composed of about 25 percent agricultural output, almost 20-percent industrial output, and more than 50-percent services output, Espinas reported.
The agricultural output comes from activities related to crop production, fishery, forestry, and hunting while industrial output is a product of construction activities like manufacturing, mining and quarrying, and electricity, gas and water.
Services output, which is the biggest portion of Bicol’s economy, comes from transportation and communication activities, trade, real estate, renting and business activities, financial services, public administration and defense, and other services.
Overall, the industry sector has not really taken off while the agriculture’s share in the regional economy decreased, which the services sector absorbed.
Based on the standard economic parameters, economic maturity comes through the transformation of agriculture to industrial first before services-oriented economy grows.
Espinas reported that the target of the Regional Development Plan (RDP) of Bicol, 2011-2016, is to improve the quality of life in the region — meaning “majority of the population, especially the poor and marginalized, enjoy the benefits of social development and economic growth.”
To achieve the goal, she identified key strategies to ensure economic growth, provide basic services, improve infrastructure and sustain development.
Within the RDP, it is targeted that the regional economy must sustain a yearly growth at 7-8 percent, reduce poverty to 27.3 percent in 2015, maintain employment rate higher than 94 percent and underemployment rate lower than 35 percent.
Bicol’s employment rate was 94.2 percent in Jan. 2013; 92.5 percent in Jan. 2014 while the underemployment rate was 35 percent in Jan. 2013 and 44 percent in Jan. 2014.(PNA)