TACLOBAN CITY, Philippines — The province of Biliran posted the highest Human Development Index (HDI) among six provinces in Eastern Visayas in 2009.
Evangeline Paran, head of the National Statistical Coordination Board-Region 8. disclosed that Biliran ranked 13.5 of the 79 provinces in the country with its HDI of 0.655 higher than the national average of 0.633. On the other hand, Northern Samar registered the lowest HDI at 0.449, Paran said.
Paran said these were based on the 2009 provincial HDI recently released by the National Statistical Coordination Board and the Human Development Network.
Three Eastern Visayas provinces, namely, Biliran, Leyte and Southern Leyte belong to the medium-HDI range of 0.500 to 0.799, while the provinces of Samar, Eastern Samar and Northern Samar are in the low-HDI range of below 0.500, pulling them to the bottom-20 provinces.
Biliran posted the highest index for all the three components: Life Expectancy Index, Education Index, and Income Index. However, its Income Index of 0.463 was way above than those of the other provinces in the region.
Human development, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is a process of enlarging people’s choices.
Paran explained that in principle, these choices can be infinite and change over time. But at all levels of development, the three essential ones are for people to lead a long and healthy life, to acquire knowledge, and to have access to resources needed for a decent standard of living.
The HDI is a composite index aggregating these three basic dimensions into a summary measure. Human development therefore focuses on people and the satisfaction of their basic needs, Paran said.