Persistently high oil and food prices will slow the country’s progress in reducing poverty this year, according to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap).

Escap data showed that if food prices increase by 20 percent this year and oil prices reach $130 per barrel, some 250,000 Filipinos who otherwise should have been lifted out of poverty will remain poor.

This will make the country’s goal of reducing poverty incidence by 2 percentage points every year to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particulary MDG 1, which aims to halve poverty incidence to 16.5 percent by 2015.

Escap macroeconomic policy and development division associate economic affairs officer Daniel Jeongdae Lee said in an e-mail to the BusinessMirror, “The quarter of a million here are not people falling back into poverty—based on the $1.25 threshold—but people who, under more favorable circumstances, would have been lifted out of poverty but are now prevented from being so. In other words, the absolute number of poor people may continue to fall, but the speed of poverty reduction will slow down.”

High prices is a major concern, particularly for the poor. Data from the National Statistics Office (NSO) showed the country’s poorest households or the bottom 30 percent income families saw a 3.5-percent increase in food inflation in 2010, higher than the food inflation experienced by all households in the Philippines last year.

High wheat prices, the Escap said, has caused prices in other parts of Asia to increase by as much as 20 percent to 30 percent in the first three months of the year. This is particularly the case in food prices in South Asia and other similar areas where wheat is the staple.

“Compared to some other regions like South Asia, countries in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, have been less affected so far, partly because price increase of rice, the main staple, has been less severe compared to wheat,” said Lee.