THE national government borrowed $300 million (P15.244 billion) from the World Bank purportedly to provide additional funding for the program that gives cash to poor families that meet education and health goals.
In his speech on Thursday, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said the World Bank’s “sustained funding support for the government’s conditional cash transfer [CCT] program for the country’s poorest households will go a long way in helping the Duterte administration achieve its agenda of reducing poverty incidence to 14 percent by 2022, and delivering a comfortable life to every Filipino.
“The
World Bank has been a strong and reliable partner in the implementation of our
[CCT]
initiative called the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, or 4Ps,” Dominguez
said.
The additional World Bank funding seeks to support the country’s CCT program until 2022. This, according to Dominguez, would be realized “by continuing to support the delivery of CCTs to millions of beneficiaries, improving the project’s implementation performance, monitoring and evaluation procedures and upgrading key dimensions of the 4Ps’ program management.”
It will also help boost early childhood development and fight malnutrition among 8.7 million children from some 4.2 million families currently benefiting from the 4Ps program, a statement from Dominguez’s office said.
Dominguez cited the World Bank for its assistance in strengthening the capability of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) as a social protection agency and the setting up of a database for the 4Ps national household targeting system, “which has already gone a long way toward providing public services and support to those who really need it.”
As the database is gradually linked to the National ID system, the targeting of beneficiaries and the efficiency and effectiveness of the 4Ps and other social protection initiatives will dramatically improve, Dominguez noted.
According to World Bank Executive Mara Warwick, the lender is pleased that the government continues to strive to achieve even greater impacts from the program, including through innovations and investment in strengthening the household
targeting system; sharpening the program’s focus on children’s health and nutrition to reduce childhood stunting; and improving the payment system through introduction of digital technology for timely payments.
A World Bank study “estimated that the country’s cash transfer programs are the second most significant contributor to poverty reduction in the Philippines after individuals’ wage earnings from nonagricultural activities,” Warwick, the WB country director for Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, said.
The 4Ps was institutionalized in April, when Republic Act 11310 was enacted. Dominguez said the 4Ps is “an indispensable component of the more comprehensive effort to combat cross-generational poverty.”
“The [government’s] economic program has the ultimate goal
of bringing down our poverty incidence from 27.6 percent in the first half of
2015 to just 14 percent by 2022, expanding economic inclusion, and making real
the dream of a comfortable life for every Filipino,”
Dominguez said.