MANILA, May 24 (Xinhua) -- The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has expressed optimism that the Philippines will meet its target to cut poverty rate by 14 percent by 2022, the government said on Thursday.
Quoting ADB Director General Ramesh Subramaniam, the Department of Finance (DOF) said in a statement that the Philippines is well poised to meet its target, with ADB providing the necessary support to initiatives that aim to address inequalities across the country, such as the government's massive infrastructure buildup and its social protection programs.
Subramaniam said with the Duterte administration's robust Build Build Build program, infrastructure spending in the first quarter of 2018 increased 34 percent year-on-year, up from 12 percent compared with 2017 over 2016.
"I've been in the ADB in Manila for the last 20 years. I have not seen a momentum on the government side for the infrastructure development as we've seen in the last two years. And ADB is very happy to be working with the government on their efforts," the DOF quoted Subramaniam as saying.
He added that besides being involved in the Philippines' infrastructure projects, the ADB has also supported its Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program, which, the ADB believes "has made a very concrete contribution" in reducing poverty and inequality in the country.
On infrastructure, Subramaniam said the ADB's Improving Growth Corridors for Mindanao Road Project "will certainly be helping reduce inequality in that region by providing more growth opportunities, improving connectivity, developing small and medium enterprises in that part of the Philippines."
"In the Philippines as well as elsewhere in the region, we are doing a lot of inclusive growth projects. In fact, if you look at poverty reduction or in poverty incidence, significant gains have been made across the region as well as particularly in the Philippines. We believe the country is well poised to bring down poverty incidence to below 14 percent by, say, 2022," Subramaniam said.
The government, on the watch of President Rodrigo Duterte, has made it its goal to reduce poverty incidence to only 14 percent by 2022, and transform the country into a high middle-income economy by that time through aggressive spending on infrastructure and human capital development.