The Philippines, along with five other countries, need to find other sources of funding to create complete social protection systems, according to an expert from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
In an Asian Development Blog, ADB Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department Principal Social Development Specialist Sri Wening Handayani said aside from the Philippines, these countries include India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
Handayani said developing Asian countries would need to increase their social protection expenditure budgets by 2 percent to 5 percent on average annually to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“Countries in Asia and the Pacific have taken serious steps to expand various aspects of their social protection systems with increased spending,” Handayani said.
“But many gaps remain. Benefits are generally low, and informal workers are not fully covered by pension and health insurance,” she added.
Handayani said achieving the SDGs by 2030 means meeting SDG Target 1.3, which highlights the importance of social protection.
Social protection include those allocated for the nutrition, health and education needs of children; income security for workers; pensions for the elderly; and universal health care coverage.
Like most Asian countries, the Philippines, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nepal and Sri Lanka face many development challenges that places pressure on their financial ability to provide and even expand social protection systems.
Some of these socioeconomic challenges are rapidly aging populations, rapid urbanization, increasing costs of social services, and rising exposure to natural disasters and climate change.
In order to finance their social protection needs, Handayani said countries must address these challenges in a sustainable, transparent and cost-effective manner.
This means expanding social protection via domestic and external resource mobilization, reallocation of existing public resources, improving tax collection and introducing new tax systems.
Handayani said an example is the introduction of excise taxes or sin taxes on tobacco products and sugary drinks in the Philippines, China and Thailand.
“There is no one-size-fits-all approach to designing and funding social protection programs. Governments can generate additional resources for expanding social protection,” Handayani said.
The ADB expert said it is also important to strengthen countries’ capacity to provide social protection.
She said financing constraints are compounded by the low capacity. This includes a lack of analysis, strategic frameworks, and an ability to effectively plan, finance and implement programs.
“Arguably the most significant transformation would be to shift toward a more targeted approach, away from general subsidies, particularly in response to economic shocks and natural disasters,” Handayani said.
The Philippines’s primary cash transfer program is the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), which started with 284,000 beneficiary households in 2008. By 2015 beneficiaries reached 4.1 million households.
In terms of population, the number of beneficiaries rose from 662,000 children aged 0 to 18 years old in 2008 to 10.2 million in 2015.
Today the program covers about 79 percent of poor households whose income is less than the amount needed to basic necessities.
The CCT extends a health grant amounting to P500 monthly year round and an education grant of P300 per child for 10 months each year to each participating household.
To receive these cash grants, pregnant women must avail themselves of prenatal and postnatal care and be attended during childbirth by a trained professional, and parents or guardians must attend the family-development sessions, which include topics on responsible parenting, health and nutrition.
Other conditions include: Children aged 0 to 5 must receive regular preventive health checkups and vaccines; those aged 6 to 14 must receive deworming pills twice a year; and children between 3 to 18 must enroll in school, and maintain an attendance of at least 85 percent of class days every month.