UN Philippines to address impact of food, energy and finance crisis through new UN joint programme

In April 2022, soon after the start of the conflict in Ukraine, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres established the Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy and Finance (GCRG) to coordinate a global response to the impacts of the triple crisis.

In its first report in April, the GCRG noted that 1.7 billion people in the world living in 107 economies are severely exposed to at least one of the crisis’ three channels of transmission, namely: rising food prices, rising energy prices, and tightening financial conditions.

UN Resident Coordinator in the Philippines Gustavo Gonzalez addressed  on 1 August 2022 an inception workshop for the UN Philippines' newest UN joint programme our newest UN Joint Programme funded by the UN Joint SDF Fund to assist the Philippine Government in responding to the impacts of global food, energy, and finance crisis.

The text of Mr. Gonzalez's message (as prepared) is found below:

In April of this year, soon after the start of the conflict in Ukraine, the UN Secretary General established the Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy and Finance (or the GCRG) to coordinate a global response to the impacts of the triple crisis.

In its first report in April, the GCRG noted that 1.7 billion people in the world living in 107 economies are severely exposed to at least one of the crisis’ three channels of transmission, namely: rising food prices, rising energy prices, and tightening financial conditions.

Needless to say, the Philippines, and even all of us present here today, have directly felt such effects. As you know, the Philippine Statistics Authority recently reported that average inflation reached 6.1 per cent in June, the highest since October 2018 when inflation averaged 6.9 per cent. Moreover, the PSA noted that two of the major drivers of this uptrend in inflation was the higher annual growth rate in the indices for food and transport (primarily due to increased fuel prices).

In its second report in June, the GCRC highlighted the need to increase people and countries’ capacity to cope, and support them in helping the poor and most vulnerable populations. To assist in this effort, the UN Joint SDF Fund established in July a Development Emergency Modality to enable joined-up emergency actions by UN Country Teams around the world to provide a rapid and collective responses to threats that can derail progress towards multiple Sustainable Development Goals. This particular modality funds cross-sectoral UN work on short-term development measures to mitigate the impacts of the food, energy, and fuel crises in different country contexts, such as this joint programme in the Philippines which has brought all of us together here today.

All of this is to say that, through this inception workshop that you are participating in today, and for the next six months that the joint programme will be implemented, each of you are now directly involved in a concerted effort initiated by the UN Secretary General to address the impacts of this global crisis.

It is evident that the Philippine Government is committed to confronting and resolving these challenges head on. As we heard in President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s first State of the Nation Address last week, he will prioritize agriculture development to address inflation of food prices and to ensure adequate food supply. The UN, through our UN Socioeconomic and Peacebuilding Framework for COVID-19 Recovery in the Philippines 2020-2023, is already actively engaged in this effort.

I informed the President about this new UN joint programme shortly after it was mobilized and he expressed appreciation for our efforts to assist the government address the challenges on food security, energy, and financial crisis. In this regard, I am hopeful by the end of this six-month joint programme, we can collectively report back to the President that the enhanced monitoring and reporting framework and the policy options for risk-mitigating actions on food security and social protection have been well-received and adopted by the Philippine Government. This joint programme will also play an important role in informing the new cooperation framework which we will update in the coming year to align with the priorities of the government to be outlined in the new Philippine Development Plan for 2023 to 2028.

In closing, I would like thank you once again for joining us today and I wish this inception workshop every success.