THE GOVERNMENT expects fewer Filipinos to go hungry amid a coronavirus pandemic.
“The National Government is confident that the hunger level would ease further while it fast-tracks the implementation of various anti-hunger measures,” Cabinet Secretary Karlo Alexei B. Nograles, who heads Task Force Zero Hunger, said in a statement in Filipino on Sunday.
About four million Filipinos families or 16% experienced hunger at least once in the past three months, lower than 30.7%, or 7.6 million in September, according to the latest Social Weather Stations poll.
While the hunger rate declined in November, the average full-year rate in 2020 was now at 21.1%, higher than 19.9% in 2011 and 2012. It has also more than doubled from the 9.3% average 9.3% last year.
Hunger incidence was the highest in Metro Manila at 23.3%, followed by Mindanao at 16%. The rest of Luzon recorded a hunger rate of 14.4%, while the Visayas was at 14.3%.
Mr. Nograles said the declining hunger rate showed that the government was on the right track toward ending hunger by 2030.
This is in line with one of the 17 sustainable development goals adopted by the United Nations (UN) in 2015. — Charmaine A. Tadalan