With a respectable economic performance of the country both locally and globally, the President is looking ahead to sustain economic progress with the midterm updating of the Philippine Development Plan 2011-2016 and the revalidation of its companion document, the PDP-Results Matrices.

For this reason, the National Economic and Development Authority Regional Office 2 started the updating of said documents with the conduct of a pre-consultation workshop Thursday at the NEDA Pamegafanan Hall, Tuguegarao City. Through Memorandum Circular No. 43, NEDA is mandated to coordinate the inter-agency planning to facilitate the updating and ensure participation of all regional and local stakeholders.

“The President stated that the updating of these development plans must address the need to sustain the rising growth, generate more employment, further reduce poverty levels, and develop economic activities in the country,” said NEDA 2 OIC-Regional Director Ferdinand P. Tumaliuan.

He noted that since 2011, the Philippines has been performing better than other countries and has received global recognitions such as ‘the emerging tiger in Asia,” has been dubbed as one of the greatest comeback stories in the region’ (HSBC Global), and the noteworthy improvement of its global competitiveness standing’ in the World Economic Forum Report.

The activity was participated in by technical experts of critical Regional Line Agencies (RLAs) grouped into six Planning Committees as follows: economic development; infrastructure development; security, justice and peace; good governance and anti-corruption; human development and poverty reduction; and climate change adaptation and mitigation.

The workshop involved an assessment of the gains, gaps, challenges and opportunities in achieving the country’s goals laid out in the PDP to cover the remaining Plan period. The outputs included comments and discussions on draft PDP RM Core Indicators and identification of additional regional indicators deemed necessary for inclusion in the national level RM.

NEDA 2 will conduct another consultation on April 24, this time with the facilitation and participation of the NEDA Central Office Officials, agency heads and other sectors of society to enhance, evaluate and deliberate the inputs of the pre-consultation before its submission to NEDA-CO as the region’s inputs.