Economist seeks review of regional dev’t system

CEBU, Philippines - Economist Perry Fajardo is calling on the government to review the regional development system to address the “regional imbalance” in the country.

Fajardo, who is also executive director of Cebu Business Club (CBC), said there is something that should be done with the distribution of the national budget as most projects being implemented are concentrated in the National Capital Region (NCR).

Fajardo, who was also former regional director of the national Economic and Development Authority (NEDA-7), said that the Regional Development Council (RDC) for instance has proposed a lot of good projects and plans but only a few were implemented.

He said Cebu should be given priority in terms of development budget allocation, being one of the fastest growing economies in the country. The province’s problem on infrastructure and other issues that have curtailed economic growth is related to the limited budget being given to the province by the national government. Or if a project is approved, the bureaucracy slows down its implementation.

He said while  Central Visayas economy has been posting tremendous performance characterized by a gross regional domestic product (GRDP) of at least 7.6 percent in 2013, the region is still suffering from developmental improvement.

The growth of the country is not as widespread as it should be as most of it has been concentrated in Metro Manila or NCR, said Fajardo.

He stressed that to realize "inclusive growth", something has to be done in the regions.

"Obviously, there is a regional imbalance. The government has to address this to reduce poverty and achieve inclusive growth," Fajardo said.

Fajardo mentioned that NCR has less than one percent of the country’s land area and yet accounted for 31.6 percent of the country’s output in 1975. Its per capita GRDP ratio is at 2.67.

In 2012, NCR made up 35.7 percent of the country’s output and had a per capita GRDP ratio of 2.79.

The Visayas and Mindanao covered much more land area than NCR yet only managed to contribute 12.7 percent and 14.4 percent, respectively to the country’s output in 2012.

Visayas registered a per capita GRDP ratio of 0.66 while Mindanao had 0.61.

Poverty is high in the other regions, compared to NCR, he said stressing that in order to solve this a serious review in the regional development programs should be started.

“These RDC projects become useless if the body does not have the budget to implement it,” added Fajardo.  (FREEMAN)