‘Kuripot’ economics
The recent claim by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) Secretary Maria Cristina Aldeguer-Roque that a family of four can prepare a noche buena meal for only P500 was immediately attacked as detached from reality, unrealistic, and insensitive. “What planet is she on?” asked several party-list representatives. Not enough for even a simple spaghetti and cheese, said economic watchdog Ibon Foundation. Insulting to Filipino workers, said labor group Kilusang Mayo Uno.
Roque fought back, saying, based on a DTI price guide released in November, a total budget of P374.50 would buy the following: Christmas ham, P170 for 500g; spaghetti sauce, P48.50; spaghetti noodles, P30 for 250g; fruit cocktail, P61.75 for 432g; all-purpose cream, P36.50 for 110ml; and pandesal, P27.75 for 10 pieces, leaving P125.50 of the P500 DTI budget for other items (“DTI stands pat on ‘insulting’ P500 noche buena budget,” News, 11/29/25).
The P500 would provide 10 sandwiches with 50g (half a “guhit”) of ham per pandesal bun. The spaghetti and fruit cocktail are half-size, just enough for one meal for a small family. There is no queso de bola, which costs from P210 to P470, according to DTI, and would already break its budget.
P500 to feed four persons computes to P125 apiece for a holiday meal. Is that supposed to bolster the economic planning agency’s claim, last October, that P64 is just enough for three meals for one person for a whole day? (See “The 64 peso spark,” 10/18/25).
Why can’t the people have a variety of food at Christmastime? What I find most un-Christmasy in the DTI noche buena menu is that it has no allowance for fruits, beverages, and desserts. It’s a cultural cousin of the stingy official minimum-cost daily menu applied for an entire year, which has one banana per person, no viands aside from boiled fish and boiled vegetables, only a little milk for whitening the coffee of adults and not for children to drink, and with no soft drinks, no alcoholic drinks (horrors!) of any kind, and no ice cream or halo-halo or any kakanin.
It’s as though being allowed to eat ham at one meal at the end of the year should make up for never having any pork, beef, chicken, or shellfish during the year. It’s as though cooking noodles with tomato sauce once a year should make up for never having adobo during the year (because adobo requires cooking oil and condiments that add cost to the menu).
(See my “The lowering of the official poverty line,” 2/12/2011 and “The poor don’t live by bread alone,” 3/5/2011. The contents of the menu have not been changed since 2011; its cost is adjusted only by applying a general price index, rather than by checking on price movements of individual items. By the way, the official poverty line for one year is obtained by multiplying the daily line by 365, instead of by 365.25–as though eating on Feb. 29 during a leap year is unnecessary).
Proposing a cheap noche buena is intrinsically anti-labor and pro-capital. To me, the DTI’s P500-menu is only an effort to justify low wages and put it in the good graces of the business sector. My guess is that, when adjusted for inflation, the value of wages in real terms has been stagnant; that is embarrassing, given the constant growth of the gross national product (GNP) per capita. I wish the government would release its data on wages, to dispute this.
The real problem is that GNP-growth does not trickle down to the lower classes (“Economic growth unshared,” 6/28/25). Currently, the number of people getting better off merely balances the number getting worse off (“The lurching economy,” 11/29/25).
Meanwhile, half of Filipino families, as of last September, consider themselves mahirap/poor, and one out of five say they went hungry at least once in the previous quarter. These proportions of the deprived had been gradually dropping, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic – during which they exploded–but have not (yet?) resumed their downtrend.
The good news for the holidays is a recent significant rise in those saying they are Not Poor, together with a fall in those saying they are on the Borderline. Let’s hope this trend continues.
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Contact: mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph.
