ILOILO CITY (PIA) — The Commission on Population and Development (CPD) 6 has recently capacitated the representatives from various national government agencies (NGAs), academe, and non-governmental organizations in integrating population and development in their respective plans and programs until 2028.
The outputs from the two-day Sectoral Planning Workshop on the Integration of the Regional Population and Development- Plan of Action (RPD-POA) 2023-2028 to partner agencies and development partners’ plans and programs will serve as the country’s overall blueprint for the coordination and implementation of the population program. Likewise, it will help facilitate in managing of the country’s demographic situation and address the interrelated population and development issues.
CPD 6 Regional Director Harold Alfred P. Marshall welcomed the participants in the planning workshop and provided an overview of the RPD-POA. He cited some of the opportunities and challenges in the integration of the action plan.
“We will attempt to integrate population and development in your plans as we have seen opportunities, though there are also challenges that we need to address,” said Marshall.
Some of the opportunities highlighted by the CPD based on the report of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) were the regional population growth rate (PGR) slowing down from 1.56 percent in 2000 to 1.14 percent in 2020; Western Visayas as the second fastest growing region with 7.2 percent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2023; and increasing working-age population from P4.40 million in 2010 to 5.04 million in 2020.
Other demographic opportunities include the regional Total Fertility Rate being at replacement level from 3.8 in 2013 to 2.2 in 2020.
Moreover, there is a decreasing total dependency ratio from 62 in 2010 to 58 in 2020; improving nutrition status among children according to National Nutrition Council (NNC), and the regional literacy rate is higher than the national rate which is at 97.7 percent in 2020.
Consecutive lectures were carried out including a discussion of Section 5 of RPD-POA 2023-2028, particularly the key areas of collaboration, the interrelationship of population and development (PopDev), and the interconnectedness of population to sectoral development framework.
CPD 6 Asst. Regional Director-designate Dr. Jonathan B. Dioteles emphasized the importance of convening the various sectors as this activity serves as an avenue for collaboration and implementation of the RPD-POA 2023-2028.
“We are thankful for all our participating agencies, as through you, we will continue to monitor and evaluate the implementation of our outputs for the following years,” said Dioteles. (AAL/AGP/PIA 6)
