The Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) said on Friday that the looming “Super El Niño” could worsen the country’s poverty rate as farmers and fishermen face growing livelihood risks from extreme heat and reduced rainfall. “Our [agriculture], fishery, forestry (AFF) sector will be devastated. Actually, the entire economy will be devastated, but more so with the AFF sector,” PBSP Executive Director Elvin Ivan Y. Uy told BusinessWorld in an interview. “With Super El Niño, with heat indices, with lower levels of precipitation, a lot of crops and a lot of smallholder farmers are at risk,” he added. The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) earlier said that El Niño could intensify into a “very strong” weather phenomenon until December, and persist through the first half of 2027. Extreme heat has affected over 451,889 people nationwide, including over 215,000 farmers and fisherfolk, according to a situational report from the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) on Tuesday. The agency added that agricultural losses and damage had reached P6.5 million. “If farmers are unable to plant, or if farmers and their land’s productivity plummets because of inadequate precipitation, irrigation, or rising input costs… all of those factors create a perfect storm of financial and economic distress for our most vulnerable,” Mr. Uy said. “We’ll all be in the same storm. Certain people may have good rafts. Some have motorized boats. Others are just trying to swim and not drown,” he added. The PBSP official urged the government to implement more measures to protect vulnerable sectors amid extreme weather. “Even without Super El Niño, government programs are already inadequate, and that’s without factoring in corruption,” he said. “I think government can really do more to ensure smallholder farmers and fisherfolk are able to have better incomes, better productivity, and have better social protection as well.” Mr. Uy noted that the proposed P7.2-trillion national budget for fiscal year 2027, up 6% from the P6.79-trillion budget in 2026, provides more resources to improve programs for the marginalized. “I think by next year, we’re no longer a poor country. This government is also not poor anymore,” he said. “We need to be smarter and cleaner with the way we actually use the money so that it accrues for the benefit of those who need it, not those who allocated the money,” he added. The Department of Economy, Planning, and Development (DepDev) reported on Monday that preliminary estimates of the country’s poverty rate fell to 9.7% in 2025, down 5.8 percentage points from 15.5% in 2023. The initial estimates used a national poverty threshold of P14,634 per month for a family of five, higher than the P13,873 threshold in 2023. — Almira Louise S. Martinez