PRESIDENT Aquino made no mention of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) during his State of the Nation Address. This is a concern, considering that it will be under his watch that the program deadline takes place. MDGs are a set of goals agreed by governments in the United Nations in 2000 and which comprise the country’s commitments to end the worst forms of human deprivation by 2015.

With five years left to meeting our MDG targets, Aquino is at a crossroad: Will he be the president to fulfill the MDGs and go beyond so that no one is left behind? Or will it be business as usual?

The MDGs were a low bar to begin with. There is really no excuse why middle income countries like the Philippines would fail to deliver. In fact, the government should have achieved the MDGs a long time ago and should now be ensuring that no one will be left behind in its poverty eradication efforts.

How can the government ensure that no Filipino is left behind? It has to allocate more funding for health, education, agriculture and environment in order to attain the MDGs by 2015.

Unfortunately, during the past administration that managed the MDGs for nine years, social development expenditures were severely reduced to decrease the deficit. Now, we cannot help but worry that in the effort to contain the very huge deficit, the Aquino administration will do the same as its predecessor.

To achieve the MDG goals on ending poverty and extreme hunger, the government should prioritize asset reform such as through genuine implementation of agrarian reform. About 70 percent of the poorest Filipinos are the landless rural poor. The impact of programs on farming methods, irrigation, extension services and market facilities will be enhanced if farmers have decisive control and ownership of the land they till. The silence of Aquino on this issue, given his haciendero background, is deafening.

The main obstacle to achieving the goals on poverty and hunger eradication is an official development strategy that is not pro-poor. It does not address the high levels of inequality in incomes, assets and opportunities. Government’s anti-poverty programs are a patchwork, piecemeal in its approach and only provide pantawid or short-term relief.

It is ironic that in the first decade of the MDGs, environment degradation in the Philippines has in fact worsened. The country’s vulnerability to climate change, particularly of the resource poor communities, was exposed. The last nine years under former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was a lost decade for the MDGs on the environment, with inconsistent plans and programs, weak implementation bordering on inaction and the lack of public financing.

The country is also off-track in the MDGs on education with the 1.4 million Filipino children dropping out of elementary and secondary school yearly and the 5.2 million kids who are out of school. The new administration should prioritize education programs and resources for the disadvantaged sectors and the out-of-school.