THE World Bank is prodding the Philippines to use innovations like digital technology to expand financial inclusion in the country.
According to World Bank President David Malpass, the country’s robust economy offers many opportunities for the government to use technology in empowering Filipinos.
Malpass commended the Philippines’s efforts to kick-start its digitalization program with the passage of a National Identification (ID) law that aims to unify and streamline an identification system for all Filipino citizens.
He said the use of new technologies, particularly digital currency and remittances, “can open new avenues” for marginalized sectors to participate in the economy. This, he added, is why the World Bank is now studying how these innovations can directly benefit people while encouraging them to avail themselves of state-provided social services, such as health care.
“This is an opportunity because you have so many things going on where you can reguide the program,” Malpass said.
The Department of Finance (DOF) said it welcomes Malpass’s support for digitalization as a way to expand financial inclusion in developing economies.
A statement from the DOF said it informed the World Bank that the Philippine government has long been implementing a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, in which the lowest-income households in the country receive cash grants on condition that they fulfill certain conditions, such as ensuring that their children go to school or that pregnant mothers get regular medical checkups.
The DOF said the CCT program “has worked pretty well” because of the assistance extended by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank to the government.
The DOF believes that the passage of a National ID law, which will be implemented on a pilot basis starting the first quarter of next year, will significantly improve the delivery of the CCT program.
According to WB Country Director for the Philippines Mara Warwick, the multilateral institution is providing technical assistance to the Philippines for the rollout of its National ID system.
The DOF said it was during a meeting when Victoria Kwakwa, World Bank’s regional vice president for East Asia and the Pacific Region, informed the DOF chief of the institution’s new policy that supports the Philippines’s reform initiatives in enhancing its fiscal stability, global competitiveness and economic resilience.
Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III supposedly told Kwakwa that the World Bank can assist and can help the new Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao set up its government and adopt the best practices of other independent political entities in other parts of the world that have successfully set up and effectively run their regional governments.
Dominguez was said to have suggested that the World Bank modify its timeline in coming up with its Country Partnership Framework (CPF) with the Philippines so that the institution’s assistance strategy would be in sync with the entry of each new administration starting in 2022.
The current CPF will last until 2024. However, Dominguez was quoted as saying in the statement this must be cut short to 2023, so that a new administration elected in 2022, would have enough time to propose and implement new projects with the World Bank.