Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua (File photo) MANILA Innovation is needed in the most basic sectors to attain the country's 2040 vision of eradicating extreme poverty and becoming a high-income country, the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) said. "The country's economic performance has exceeded expectations in 2021. We expect to recover to the pre-pandemic level in early 2022. However, as this pandemic has shown, we cannot simply return to business as usual. Except for some city-states, no country has achieved high-income status without first addressing agricultural productivity," Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua said on Wednesday during the Inclusive Innovation Conference 2021 organized by the Department of Trade and Industry. Chua cited the case of the Rice Tariffication Law, which succeeded in bringing down rice prices for all Filipino consumers while increasing the productivity and income of rice farmers thr
Sample Philippine identification or national ID (File photo) MANILA - The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) has achieved its target of 50 million registrations for the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) in 2021 despite the challenges brought about by the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic. As of December 10, the PSA registered 50,014,382 Filipinos to the demographic and biometric data collection. In partnership with the PSA, the Land Bank of the Philippines has also processed 6,786,939 bank account applications through a colocation strategy in PhilSys registration centers. This milestone will help promote financial inclusion, improve the targeting of beneficiaries, and accelerate the delivery of government social protection programs for all Filipinos. "The pandemic emphasized the urgency of providing every Filipino with a unique and digitalized ID. This is why we accelerated the roll-out of the PhilSys. We congratulate and thank the PSA, our government and de