BY ANTHONY IAN CRUZ

GOVERNANCE and accountability remain the major stumbling blocks in the Philippines’ bid to attain the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are development targets that the 189-member United Nations pledged in 2000 to achieve by 2015.

The eight MDGs range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education.

United Nations resident coordinator Nileema Doble yesterday told a media forum the Philippines’ MDG 2007 score card showed it is "off-target" in three MDGs, namely providing universal access to education, reducing maternity mortality, and giving access to reproductive health services.

The five MDGs which the Philippines is "on-target" to meet by 2015 are poverty reduction, nutrition, child mortality, combating HIV/AIDS, and access to safe drinking water and sanitary toilet facilities.

Doble said apart from governance and accountability issues, "increasing inequality, funding gaps, high population growth rates, the Mindanao conflict and climate change" are also major factors.

Colin Davis, senior program officer of the United Nations International Children’s Education Fund (Unicef), said the government’s "under-investment in education" is to blame for the poor marks it got on education.

Net enrolment rate in public and private elementary schools has dipped from 96.7 percent in 2000 to 84.4 percent in 2005.

Primary cohort survival rates, which measure the percentage of pupils who finish elementary, also dropped from 72.4 percent in 2002 to 70 percent in 2005.

"The education share in the national budget has fallen progressively over the last 11 years from almost 16 percent in 1998 to just under 12 percent in 2008 which has resulted in a per capita expenditure for basic education dropping from P4,727 in 2000 to P3,880 in 2006," said Davis.

Davis said other "causal factors" hampering universal access to education are poverty and the "unabated" increase in population.

Suneetha Mukherjee, United Nations Population Fund country representative, said the 2015 target of reducing the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) to 52 may not be achievable based on current statistics.

The MMR is the ratio of the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.

Citing government statistics, Mukherjee said that MMR dropped from 209 in the 1990s to 172 in 1998 but "stagnated" at 162 in 2006.

"At this pace of reduction, the target of 52 will be unachievable," she said.

She said that "while 40 percent of maternal deaths are unclassified, it is clear that hypertension, hemorrhage and unsafe abortion are the three major causes. All of these are preventable."

She said the government should seriously consider a campaign to make available appropriate family planning methods, which she said can lower maternal deaths by almost 30 percent.

The UN Millennium Summit in September 2000 adopted a Millennium Declaration renewing global commitment to peace and human rights by establishing MDGs towards reducing poverty and human deprivation by 2015.

The Philippines had committed to craft its 2004-2010 Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) around the MDGs.

The Medium Term Philippine Development Plan is a detailed roadmap towards reducing poverty through job creation and enterprise.

The 2004-2010 MTPDP targets gross domestic product growth accelerating to 7 percent to 8 percent by 2009 and 2010; an investment to GDP ratio nearing 28 percent by 2010; exports exceeding $50 billion by 2006; a balanced budget by 2010; annual job creation exceeding 1.7 million jobs by 2009; and poverty incidence reduced to below 20 percent by 2009.