The Eastern Samar Community Blog

AFP reports that SM Prime Holdings is set to extend the SM City North EDSA by 22 acres (90,000 sqm) to up the total area to 105 acres (425,000 sqm) making it the world’s third largest shopping mall.

With this development, how can we say that the Philippines is a poor country? We may not even really qualify to be called a country of poor people after all. If the Filipinos are poor, then how come these malls continue to thrive? And it seems that there’s no stopping them from ever increasing their number and their sizes!

The NSCB reports that the 2007 Poverty Threshold of the Philippines is at an average of Php 14,866 with the urban PT at Php 16,936 and the rural PT at Php 14,103, while the food threshold is at an average of Php 9,987 with the urban FT at Php 10,936 and the rural FT at Php 9,767.

This means that in order to meet the basic food and non-food needs, a family must earn at least Php 16,936 in the urban area while Php 14,103 in the rural area. On food alone, the income requirement necessary is Php 10,936 for those in the urban setting and Php 9,767 at the rural seting.

According to the same agency the number of poor people in the country is about 30 out of 100. While in terms of families, it is about 24 of 100 Filipino families. They say that in comparison to 2003, the poverty incidence improved.

Maybe the boom in the shopping mall industry would show that Pinoys are really not that poor. But if you take a closer look all around us, you’ll notice a lot of poor people in the streets and squatter areas are in almost every available open space.

Maybe the Philippines is not poor after all. Maybe it is just that the wealth of the country isn’t distributed well enough. There maybe many factors which contribute to this unequal, or at least improperly, distributed wealth.

Whose responsibility it is then to make the necessary adjustments?

(For more, visit http://sugobnilongino.blogspot.com and http://lancein2010.blogspot.com )