Analysts said that adequate government resources could have financed vital social services including subsidized education, public health services and infrastructure that will attract more investments and create jobs. Such projects would have helped people to rise from poverty.

But with a tight fiscal space, it will be difficult to allocate limited resources to poverty alleviation. For Aquino and his future economic managers (he is yet to name the members of his Cabinet), their biggest challenge is to reduce poverty.

The Philippines is one of the few countries that managed to post a modest growth rate despite a global economic crisis that crippled Western economies. Under the watch of outgoing President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Philippine GDP posted a 31-year high of 7. 3 percent in 2007. In the first quarter of this year, GDP expanded by an impressive 7.3 percent.

A third of the country's 90 million populace subsists on less than two U.S. dollars a day and they're yet to benefit from the outgoing administration's economic growth.

The Asian Development Bank said that compared to neighboring countries, the Philippines is lagging in terms of meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), specifically on poverty reduction. The poverty reduction target under the MDGs is for countries to halve poverty incidence by 2015. That means in the next four years, Philippine poverty incidence should have been reduced to about 15 percent of its population.