What is 40 Philippine pesos?

• About one U.S. dollar

• Three hours of parking at the mall on a weekday

• One order of large fries at Jollibee or McDonald's

• One bottle of local beer at our neighborhood bar

• One Pilot retractable ballpen

Forty pesos will not get you a full lunch at our school cafeteria. It's not enough to get you the smallest cup of coffee at Starbucks. You'll need a few pesos more to buy one liter of gasoline for your car. You'll need ten times the amount to buy a paperback of one of the bestsellers. And you'll need a hundred times forty pesos to buy a very good leather bag or pair of shoes.


What is 40 pesos?
According to the latest (2006) official poverty statistics report of the National Statistical Coordination Board, released on 5 March 2008, 40 pesos is what more than 27 million Filipinos have to subsist on for an entire day.



Read the ABS-CBN report here.
View the numbers here.