2013 budget to create over 1-M jobs – NEDA

MANILA, Philippines – The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) is confident that the 2013 national budget will be able to create more than a million direct and indirect jobs.

NEDA Director-General Arsenio Balisacan said next year’s P2-trillion budget is labor-intensive, which means it can generate employment for more Filipinos, helping reduce poverty.

“We are in the process of computing how much employment the budget can create but I expect it to be labor-intensive because it will finance a lot of infrastructure, social service projects. It’s a very employment-oriented budget,” Balisacan said on the sidelines of the launch of Philippine think tank, Angara Center for Law and Economics.

Balisacan said the over 3 million jobs created by programs and projects funded by the national budgets in the past two years, as reported by President Aquino, must be maintained or exceeded. That’s equivalent to more than 1.5 million jobs annually.

“Somehow the economy should be able to create the same level of jobs, otherwise we will have a problem. It should be more because population is growing, the labor force is growing. We need more and more jobs every year, otherwise our poverty will worsen,” the NEDA chief said.

He cautioned, however, that the health of the global economy will have an impact on the number of jobs created. If the global slowdown is not as bad as predicted by some sectors, more local jobs will be created, according to him. – Rappler.com