Silvino Lobos ranks the poorest in EV

NSCB releases 2009 city/municipal poverty estimates for Eastern Visayas

By Philippine Information Agency (PIA 8)
August 8, 2012

TACLOBAN CITY  –  National Statistical Coordination Board Region 8 head Evangeline M. Paran informed that NSCB has just released the 2009 city/municipal poverty estimates including that for Eastern Visayas.

This is part of the agency’s continuing effort to be more relevant and to respond to the clamor for updated poverty statistics at lower levels of disaggregation, Director Paran said.

The poverty estimates were the results of the Project on the Generation of the 2009 Small Area Estimates (SAE) of Poverty of the NSCB, with funding assistance from the World Bank (WB) and the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID).

The poverty mapping methodology combined the data sets of the 2009 Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES), the 2009 Labor Force Survey (LFS) and the 2007 Census of Population of the NSO to come up with the 2009 small area poverty estimates at the city and municipal levels, Director Paran added.

Director Paran expressed hope that these data will be useful in the targeting of beneficiaries and implementation of poverty alleviation programs in the region. She also called for feedback on the policy uses of these poverty statistics.

Based on the 2009 small area estimates (SAE) of poverty, 86% or 121 of the of the 143 cities and municipalities in Eastern Visayas have poverty incidence ranging from 32.1 to 60 percent while 22 municipalities and cities have poverty incidence ranging from 32 to 20.5.

Only three municipalities in the Region have poverty incidences higher that 60.0%. These are Silvino Lobos, Northern Samar with 64.8% poverty incidence; Jipapad, Eastern Samar with 60.6% poverty incidence and Maslog, Eastern Samar with 60.2 %.

It was noted that the poorest municipality in Eastern Visayas has lower poverty incidence than Siayan in Zamboanga Del Norte which is the poorest city/municipality in the Philippines with a poverty incidence of 79.9%.

Of the poorest 20 municipalities in 2009, 17 municipalities are from Mindanao, 3 are from Luzon, none from the Visayas.

For Eastern Visayas, the poorest 20 municipalities in 2009 are all in the Samar Island provinces, 11 municipalities are from Northern Samar, seven municipalities are from Eastern Samar and three municipalities from Samar.

Moreover, of the ten municipalities/cities in Eastern Visayas with lowest poverty incidence in 2009, seven are from the province of Leyte while three are from the province of Biliran.