Fix local agri to grow middle class—MBC

The influential Makati Business Club (MBC), which represents the country's top executives, is urging the government to implement sweeping institutional reforms in the agriculture sector, which it argues is essential to narrow the massive wealth gap between the rich and the poor.

- BY DEXTER BARRO II

Speaking at the MBC’s year-end review last week, Executive Director Rafael Ongpin said the business group is calling for serious changes in agriculture as part of its push for wealth redistribution.

Ongpin clarified that the MBC's concept of wealth redistribution is not "socialist" or about "taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor."

“We mean growing the pie at a rate where the poor, which is those below the poverty line and just above, their incomes grow at a faster rate and therefore enables them to move up into the middle class,” he said.