Philippines ranked as 12th most populous country

The Philippines was listed as the 12th most populated country by an international population watchdog, a local newspaper reported Thursday.

Citing a report from the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau (PRB), the Philippine Star said the country is expected to remain the 12th until 2050 with its current population estimated at 83.7 million.

With the increase rate of 2.36 percent annually, the highest inAsia, the country's population is to reach 118.4 million by 2025 and to 147.3 million by 2050.

According to the report, the Philippines has been ranked as the14th place in 2002 and 13th in 2003 by the non-profit, non-advocacy organization founded in 1929 to monitor population trends.

In a separate report by the Philippine Population Commission, the capital, Metro Manila, is now the 17th among the world's population urban agglomerations and will rise to the 15th by 2015.

The report presented on Wednesday at the forum dubbed as "Crafting a Legislative Agenda in Pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals"also showed that at least one third of the Philippines' population concentrated in its four towns and 13 cities.

PRB senior demographer Carl Haub told the Star that there were signs the country's fertility rate was slowly declining since the number of women using modern contraceptive methods is up 33 percent.

Other Catholic countries like Portugal, Spain, Italy and Polandcontrol their birth rates despite the clergy's admonitions to the faithful to refrain from using contraceptives disallowed by the church.

In the Catholic-dominant Philippines, the Church wields considerable influence on policy issues and impedes any proposal to promote artificial contraception.

However, House of Representatives filed last month three bills to urge the government to adopt a two-child policy to address the population problem.

"Our resources can only afford a small population and the two-child policy is part of my strategy to save the nation because over population will kill the nation," said House Speaker Jose de Venecia.

Experts warned that a massive population burden will undermine the country's effort to rebuild the national economy, especially discourage President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's pledge to create 6 million to 10 million jobs during her six-year presidency.

Arroyo, a staunch Catholic, earlier said that the government supports family planning and birth control in the country but implementation has been left to local governments.

However, the population problem was not included in her State of the Nation Address in July, which born her strong determinationto eradicate poverty by 2010 through a series of executive and legislative packages.

Source: Xinhua