CCT BY WB & AusAID / P2.4-B DOLED OUT, SEEKS P2-B MORE
[PHOTO - CCT HOPEFULS. Residents of a barangay in
Metro Manila search for their names on the latest shortlist of beneficiaries of
the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) Program posted by the Department of Social
Welfare and Development (DSWD). Photo by Che de los Reyes.]
MANILA, AUGUST
22, 2011 (STAR) By Aurea Calica - Malacañang welcomed
yesterday the joint report of the World Bank (WB) and the Australian Agency for
International Development (AusAID) that the government's conditional cash
transfer (CCT) program for indigent families can raise their annual incomes by
12.6 percent, thus reducing poverty incidence by 6.2 percent.
In a statement, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said the report
reaffirms the belief of the administration that the program is a "solid
foundation" for improving the quality of life of impoverished Filipinos.
The report, which was released on Friday, said the program can reduce overall
food poverty in areas covered by 5.5 percent.
The CCT program, also known as the "Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program,"
provides cash grants to indigent families on condition that they send their
children to school, have infants immunized from diseases, and that mothers visit
community health centers.
"And while the increase in household incomes is indeed an intended objective
of the program, the government's overall social program involves much more in
ensuring that beneficiaries remain healthy, educated, and productive, thus
giving them the ability to raise their lot in life," Lacierda said.
The CCT program is patterned after the cash transfer program in Brazil.
"Studies of various CCT programs worldwide have shown how such transfers are
indeed directed toward prioritizing food on the table. If this is so, results
suggest that the Pantawid Pamilya (program) can reduce food poverty among
household beneficiaries by 13.3 percentage points. Consequently, it can reduce
overall food poverty in program areas by 13.3 percentage points," Lacierda said.
He said the program seeks to produce skilled and educated citizens.
"This is in fact only one aspect of a wide-ranging strategy toward inclusive
growth: the government is continuously working toward ensuring a level playing
field that will encourage investors and generate jobs," he said.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), which manages the
program, said the beneficiaries who graduate from the program will also be given
cash capital to start a business.
In an interview during the CCT's first convergence caravan held in
Mandaluyong City yesterday, Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said the
first set of beneficiaries will graduate from the program in 2013. These are
indigent families covered by the program since 2008.
Soliman said her department is conducting a resurvey in 14 cities in the
National Capital Region (NCR), starting in Mandaluyong, to eliminate unqualified
recipients from the list of beneficiaries.
She said 400 families of the 150,000 recently removed from the DSWD list of
covered families admitted they were not qualified to be beneficiaries of the CCT
program.
Mandaluyong Mayor Benhur Abalos said the city government will provide one job
per family to support the CCT program.
He said the local government has partnered with various companies that can
provide carpentry, welding, and automotive jobs. Four hundred people have so far
been provided jobs.
The city will also create a funeral parlor for the burial needs of city
residents.
Mandaluyong Rep. Neptali Gonzales II told the city's beneficiaries that an
amount of P100,000 may be provided for each group to enable them to start their
own businesses.
"(An) exit plan has to be prepared for all of you. Start your own business.
So that when you graduate from this program, the CCT will be extended to other
families who are also in need like you," he said.
Beneficiaries testify
Melanie Encabo, a resident of Welfareville, Barangay Addition Hills in
Mandaluyong has been a beneficiary of the CCT program since last year. She said
the P1,400 cash grant she has been receiving each month from the government is a
big help to her family.
"Now, I can buy the food and school needs of our children," she said.
Another beneficiary, Marilyn Soria, said aside from being able to buy the
needs of her children in her school she can also buy vitamins for them.
"My husband is working on and off as a mason. We hope that this program will
continue," Soria said.
A teary-eyed Colleen Nubia, a Grade 6 student, said she and her siblings are
now going to school with allowance.
"We are very thankful to President Noynoy Aquino. We hope that he will
continue this program," she said.
Ederlyn Padias, principal of the Jose Fabella Memorial School in Welfareville,
said there has been a drastic increase in enrolment because of the CCT program.
"The enrolment of pupils in our school increased from 700 last year to 900
this year. This is an indication that the recipients of the conditional cash
transfer program are now going to school," Padias said.
At present, there are 1,400 CCT beneficiaries in Mandaluyong. -
With Jose Rodel Clapano, Evelyn Macairan
EARLIER REPORT FROM ABS-CBN NEWS
PNoy gov't doles out P4-B, seeks P2-B more ABS-CBN
– Tue, Jun 14, 2011
[PHOTO - President Aquino witnesses the signing of the Oath of Commitment
by the two millionth beneficiary of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program]
MANILA,
Philippines - The Aquino government has already spent P4.127 billion of the
P17.13-billion Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) budget allotted for 2011.
Despite this, Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary
Dinky Soliman faced the Senate finance oversight committee on Tuesday afternoon
and said it still needs an additional P2 billion to cover over 2 million
households for its Pantawid Pamilya program.
Senate Finance committee chair Franklin Drilon did not commit to supporting
her request for additional funds, pending a certification from the Department of
Budget and Management that there are enough funds.
As of May 31, the DSWD had already released P4.127 billion to 1.6 million
households.
Soliman said the DSWD is short of funds because it started giving away cash
before the programmed implementation in June.
She said the program has a high accomplishment rate in terms of health
visits, education, and family development sessions, which are pre-conditions for
the release of funds to beneficiaries.
Soliman also told the committee that it has an assessment mechanism, via a
survey commissioned to see the effectiveness of the program.
The survey will be done by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) toward the
latter part of 2011.
Both Drilon and Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said they were satisfied
with the explanation of Soliman.
Under the government's CCT program, the poorest of the poor gets P300 for
each child (no more than 3 children and not older than 14 years old), while the
mother or parent gets P500 every month on the condition that the children attend
at least 85% of their school days, and submit to the government's health
programs like vaccination.
FROM SUNSTAR ONLINE
Hungry families in Phl hit 3.4 million Tuesday,
January 11, 2011
HUNGRY
Filipinos rose to 3.4 million in November last year from three million a quarter
ago as the number of households that tagged themselves as poor barely changed,
an independent pollster reported Tuesday.
In its last hunger survey for 2010, the Social Weather Stations (SWS) said
the 3.4 million households represent 18.1 percent of the respondents, which
claimed they have experienced hunger in the last three months.
But the Palace stressed that hunger cases are expected to ease once the
P21-billion conditional cash transfer program goes full swing.
Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda made the statement following the
latest SWS survey, showing the increase in hunger incidence in the country.
Lacierda noted that the CCT program of the Department of Social Welfare and
Development (DSWD) has just kicked off and should be given more time to
progress.
"Nag-uumpisa pa lang naman ang conditional cash transfer," he said.
Quoting DSWD secretary Dinky Soliman, he said the master list of the CCT
beneficiaries was already completed except for two municipalities.
He added since the budget for the program has been approved, the DSWD can
work smoothly for the estimated 3.4 million beneficiaries.
Lacierda said they will ask the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda)
to verify if the result of SWS survey is seasonal.
The hunger incidence is a sharp contrast to the three million families (15.9
percent) recorded in September last year but way below the historic high of 24
percent or 4.4 million households posted in December 2009.
Both the highest and lowest (7.4 percent, March 2004) hunger incidence,
meanwhile, were recorded during the time of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
SWS also noted that almost 9.2 million families found themselves as poor or
49 percent of the respondents. The number, however, is deemed insignificant
compared to the September 2010 data of 48 percent.
Around two in five households (36 percent), on the other hand, considered
themselves as food poor, just two points down from the previous survey.
Explaining the rise in overall hunger, the SWS said the number of families
experiencing moderate hunger (defined as those who experienced hunger "only
once" or a "few times") went up by two percentage points.
Families that suffered severe hunger — those who experienced hunger "often"
or "always" stayed at 3.1 percent or equivalent to 588,000 households.
The survey also showed that hunger incidence increased across all areas
except in the Visayas where it remained at 15.3 percent.
SWS reported a four-percent spike in Balance of Luzon to 18.3 percent, almost
two points in Mindanao and only a point in Metro Manila, which is at 21.7
percent.
The survey firm further noted that moderate hunger rose in all areas while
severe hunger is higher than the 12-year averages in the said areas.
Meantime, self-rated poverty slipped by nine points in Mindanao to end 2010
at 44 percent, followed by eight points in Visayas to 53 percent and by five
points in Metro Manila to 44 percent.
An 11-point rise, however, is recorded in the Balance of Luzon to 51 percent.
In urban areas, self-rated poverty dropped by a point to 42 percent while the
incidence did not move at 55 percent in rural communities.
The poll organization said self-rated food poverty declined 13 points in
Metro Manila to 28 percent by 11 points in the Visayas to 39 percent and by two
points in Mindanao to 34 percent. SWS recorded a six-point uptick in the Balance
of Luzon.
The self-rated poverty threshold, or the monthly budget poor households say
they need in order not to consider themselves poor in general, remained sluggish
despite considerable inflation.
SWS said the findings only show that the poor families have been lowering
their living standards or simply belt-tightening.
The survey, which was done from November 27 to 30, 2010, showed that the
median poverty thresholds for poor households were P15,000 in Metro Manila,
P9,000 in the rest of Luzon, P8,000 in the Visayas and P5,000 in Mindanao.
The median food-poverty threshold, on the other hand, registered a new high
of P9,000 in Metro Manila, beating the previous record of P8,000. The pollster
estimated it at P4,000 in the rest of Luzon and the Visayas and at P3,000 in
Mindanao.
Uphill climb
Benjamin Diokno, an economist at the University of the Philippines, said the
government should start the ball rolling on cutting down hunger and poverty
incidence.
"Hunger incidence continues to persist. While the results are noisy, the
overall trend is that hunger incidence has been on an upward trend since 2003.
That's an enormous challenge to any government," he told Sun.Star.
The government earlier called the conditional cash transfer program as its
main poverty reduction scheme.
Under the program initiated by Arroyo, cash grants to extremely poor
households will be given to improve their health, nutrition and education
particularly of children aged 0-14.
The beneficiaries, in return, must meet specific conditions such as regular
medical check-ups and high attendance rates of school-age children before they
can get the cash assistance.
From only four municipalities in Agusan del Sur and Misamis Occidental, the
4Ps has now served more than 900,000 families nationwide as President Benigno
Aquino III wanted 2.3 million families to be covered this year.
Soliman earlier said the program would result to a nearly 10-percent
reduction of the country's poverty level from 33.6 percent in 2006 to 24.5
percent in 2016.
SWS said the latest survey was conducted using face-to-face interviews of
1,200 adults with error margins of three percent for national and six percent
for area percentages.
It further said the survey questions about the family's poverty and
food-poverty were directed to the household head. (Virgil
Lopez/Jill Beltran/Sunnex)
COMMENTARY FROM 'FOCUS ON
THE GLOBAL SOUTH' ONLINE -
http://www.focusweb.org/
THE CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFER DEBATE AND THE COALITION AGAINST THE POOR
by Walden Bello
Focus on the Global South
Tue, 2010-11-02
Conditional Cash Transfers or CCTs have become the
subject of controversy recently, with a marathon debate on it breaking out over
it during the budget deliberations at the House of Representatives.
The CCT program was introduced in 2008, during the administration of Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo. During the recent budget hearings, however, Arroyo, now the
representative of the Second District of Pampanga, opposed the expansion of the
program planned by the new administration.
The idea behind CCT's is that poor families are given a subsidy if they agree
to certain conditions: keep their children in school, receive health care during
and after pregnancy, and agree to have children immunized, subjected to periodic
checkups, and monitored for growth. The aim is to "increase the productivity of
the poor," make children more competitive in the job market when they grow up,
and thus "break the intergenerational cycle of poverty."
CCTs in the Philippines
First launched in Mexico, Brazil, and Bangladesh over a decade ago, CCT
programs had spread to about 23 developing countries by 2008. In Latin America
alone, some 93 million people are said to be enrolled in CCT programs.
The program in the Philippines was initiated in 2008, during the food price
crisis.
A poor family was given a P500 monthly cash grant for health and nutrition
needs, with another P300 per child for educational expenses. Stipends were
limited to three children, coming to a maximum subsidy of P1400 for each family
per month
700,000 families were reached by the program over the last two years.
Now the new administration of President Benigno Aquino III plans to expand
the program to cover 1.3 million more families with the help of a recent $400
million loan from the Asian Development Bank, a commitment that comes on top of
an earlier $405 million loan by the World Bank in November 2009. The ADB and the
World Bank are among the biggest backers of CCTs, with the Bank claiming that
its technocrats played the key role in conceptualizing them.
Do CCTs Work?
What is the record of CCTs?
According to a number of studies, they seem to be working in terms of
containing poverty. In Mexico, one exhaustive study of the
Progresa-Oportunidades Program claims that it reduced the share of the
population living in poverty by 16 per cent. Over 5.2 million households are
enrolled in the program, which has been funded by the government, with support
also coming from the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.
In Brazil, the CCT Program, known as Bolsa Familia, is massive, with some 12
million families participating in it. The flagship program of the Lula
government addressing the needs of the poor, it is said to have played a central
role in lifting 20 million Brazilians from absolute poverty and pushing 31
million into the middle class. According to one report in the Guardian, "One of
the biggest successes has been the enormous advances made to the school
enrolment program. This is largely thanks to Bolsa Familia ("Family Fund"),
which pays poor families if their children attend school. This fund has pushed
children off the street and into the school room, while also providing the
poorest with a well-needed form of income support."
Even the radical MST, the Landless Movement, has supported Bolsa, though it
realizes this might have dampening effects on their members' willingness to
undertake land occupations.According to one MST leader quoted in the report of a
Church-linked research center, "…Given the extreme poverty in Brazil and the
large numbers of people going hungry, these clientelist policies are
necessary…Necessary but not sufficient."
Supporters of CCTs emphasize that reduction of gender inequality is one of
the principal benefits of CCTs. According to a World Bank press release, "Women
and marginalized groups in particular see benefits from CCTs, often stretching
beyond the household. In Mexico, women reported increased self-confidence,
awareness and control over family resources. Programs in Chile, Panama and the
Dominican Republic have helped indigenous groups and the extreme poor obtain
identity documents, which not only make it possible for them to enroll in CCT
programs, but also provide access to other social programs, voting rights, and
legal protection."
CCTs: the Cons
What is my view of CCTs?
First of all, the ADB and the Bank's approach to them is that they are the
principal tool to reduce poverty.
Now, while they may be a useful complement to structural reform, they are not
a substitute for it, and the latter is the agenda of the multilateral agencies,
which are loath to address structural issues.
Second, CCTs have a palliative intent, that is, they seek to contain the
social damage that is being created by the neoliberal macroeconomic policies
pushed by the Bank and the ADB.
In this regard, I would say of CCTs what I wrote regarding microlending a few
years ago: "Structural adjustment programs promoting trade liberalization,
deregulation, and privatization have brought greater poverty and inequality to
most parts of the developing world…Many of the same institutions that pushed and
are continuing to push these failed macro programs, like the World Bank, are
often the same institutions pushing microcredit programs. Viewed broadly,
microcredit can be seen as a safety net for millions of people destabilized by
the large-scale macro-failures engendered by structural adjustment."
CCTs have the same thrust as microlending: damage control at the
microeconomic level.
Let us be clear therefore: CCTs are about poverty containment rather than
poverty reduction.
CCTs : the Pros
Does this then mean that there is no place for CCTs in the anti-poverty
arsenal of a developing country like the Philippines?
Here is where I part ways with some of the more doctrinaire critics of
conditional cash transfers. I would deploy them here for three big reasons.
First, poverty is so pervasive and the combination of runaway corruption and
neoliberal policies under the nine-year reign of the previous administration led
to so much increase in poverty that any tool to contain its further spread must
be utilized.
I agree with the comment of the MST leader on the Bolsa Familia cited
earlier: given the large and increasing numbers of people going hungry, CCTs
have a critical role to play, though I would not go as far as saying they are
"necessary."
Second, under the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) covenant, the
Philippines agreed to reduce its poverty rate by half, to 15 per cent of the
population by 2015.This covenant may not be legally binding but it has now
become morally binding
Thanks to Arroyo and neoliberal policies, we will probably not reach this
target by 2015, but we are expected to at least show significant progress by the
international community .CCTs can be useful in this enterprise.
Third, CCTs buy time for structural reforms to kick in. The key measures to
reduce poverty are reversing trade liberalization, a moratorium on foreign debt
payments, and effective agrarian reform.
Progressives need some time to win the battle to win approval for these
policies in the administration coalition, and after that, we need more time
before the poverty-reduction impacts of thesefar-reaching reforms kick in. Thus
I would see CCTs as a stopgap measure, to keep millions above the water line
until reforms show results.
The Critics' Arguments
The opponents of CCT in the Philippines have attacked it on a number of
grounds: that CCTs are a "doleout"; that the vast amounts of resources allocated
to the program would open it up to corruption; and that the World Bank and ADB
would subvert the program along neoliberal lines.
The doleout argument is based on a deliberate misunderstanding of the way the
program works, which is its use of conditionalities, like keeping children in
school to provide them with much needed skills, in return for providing cash
support for families.
The CCTs as inducement-for-corruption charge has some validity, but it can be
addressed, not by throwing out the baby with the bathwater, which is what Arroyo
wants, but by the institutionalization of tight controls, which can be done, as
proven by the experience of Bolsa in Brazil and Progresa in Mexico.
Under a corrupt regime like the Arroyo presidency, the vast sums of money
involved would definitely create corruption.
While the Aquino administration, which ran on an anti-corruption,
anti-poverty agenda, cannot promise a 100 per cent elimination of corruption, it
will definitely substantially reduce it, and it will certainly make sure
corruption does not infect its flagship program.
As for the ADB and the World Bank having their own agenda with CCTs, this is
to be expected. But one does not run away from the devil. One outsmarts and
outmaneuvers it. And the main way to control and minimize the influence of the
Bank and the ADB is by firmly limiting their role to providing monetary
assistance and keeping their hands off the design of the program and its
implementation.
One of the ways to ensure design and implementation along lines that would
reduce the potential for irregularities and foreign interference would be to set
up a Special Oversight Committee of the CCT in Congress. Reps. Bernadette
Herrera, Kaka Bagao, and I proposed the formation of such a committee during the
House budget deliberations. Over 100 House members signed the resolution, and
the House leadership has agreed to set up the proposed committee.
CCTs and the Movement for Social Protection
But even more important, the design and implementation of the program must
involve the active participation of civil society and the grassroots urban and
rural communities.
CCTs must be democratically implemented, not bureaucratically managed. This
is the challenge that the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD)
must take up, and we must hold its feet to the fire to ensure its compliance.
Indeed, as shown in Brazil, CCT's can be an important weapon in empowering
the poor. The could be, not a barrier, but a step forward in the effort to
create a base for a movement for "transformative social protection," one that
sees the right to be free of poverty as a basic social right, the fulfillment of
which must be the basic goal of economic and social policy.
Where the Critics are Coming from
But where are the critics of CCTs really coming from?
My sense is that the opponents of CCT may be categorized into the following:
- those who oppose it for partisan political gains, such as Arroyo, who is
now critical of a program begun under her administration out of sheer
opportunism;
- traditional politicians, who are worried that the CCT program will destroy
the ties of patronage politics that serve as their main form of control over the
urban and rural poor;
- the extreme left, who are afraid that the reform coalition now in
government could use the program to create a mass base that would become
relatively impermeable to their ultra-left politics
- the middle class, who are particularly susceptible to the charge that CCTs
are a "doleout."
Not being able to come in touch with the poor except at arms length, the
middle class in most developing countries often fail to appreciate how closed
the channels of social mobility are to the vast majority of the population.
The Philippine middle class is no different. They are unaware of the initial
class advantages they possess that have allowed them to "make it" and often
cannot see why the poor cannot also make it if they were able to make it. Only
people who really do not understand the lives of the poor would make the
criticism that the CCT would allegedly "make men lazy because they know their
wives would have a monthly dole from government."
Countering GMA's Coalition against the Poor
The truth is that for poor households, there is never enough, and men and
women work at multiple jobs to make ends meet. Middle class Filipinos ought to
keep their subconscious class biases in check and absorb the fact that, to use
Ernest Hemingway's (and F. Scott Fitzgerald's) oft quoted line about the rich,
"the poor are different from you and me. "What is a wasteful handout for the
middle class is a necessity for vast majority of our compatriots living in
poverty.
Middle-class Filipinos cannot be complicit in perpetuating them in this awful
condition owing to class insensitivity—the kind that is on display when the
chattering classes deride CCTs unthinkingly as "doleouts."
They must not allow themselves to be unwittingly baited into the anti-poor
coalition being constructed and led by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
*Walden Bello is a representative of Akbayan in the House of
Representatives and senior analyst at Focus on the Global South. He can be
reached at waldenbello@yahoo.com
Focus on the Global South
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2011 by
PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
All rights reserved
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