PHL cash transfers for poor on target, says ADB

Three international development agencies reviewed the progress of the conditional cash transfer program targeting 2.3 million of the poorest households of the country and found that the CCT is meeting its anti-poverty goals, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said Wednesday. Beneficiary families’ levels of availment of health services and enrolment in public schools have risen, the ADB said, but did not mention by how much for the whole program. The joint review mission, conducted by the ADB together with the World Bank and the Australian Agency for International Development and Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), included a visit to an Aeta community in Pampanga. First year and second year enrolments in the Aeta community’s elementary school “more than doubled since (they) began receiving support under (the) CCT program just under two years ago," the ADB also said. “The joint review conducted by our development partners confirmed that the beneficiary families are living up to their commitment to invest in the education and health of their children, therefore improving their chance of having a better future and living a better life," said DSWD Secretary Corazon Juliano-Soliman. The ADB said the joint review will continue with “quantitative impact studies" meant to monitor and evaluate the CCT program. “These studies are expected to back up international evidence showing that CCT programs are highly effective in reducing poverty," according to the ADB. Implementation details In a separate statement issued several weeks earlier, the DSWD said “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." In that same statement, the DSWD chief said her department is reviewing the lists of CCT beneficiaries “in 14 cities in the National Capital Region (NCR), starting in Mandaluyong, to eliminate unqualified recipients from the list of beneficiaries." According to the DSWD, Soliman 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. That statement also quoted Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda as saying that research done on CCT implementation 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," said Lacierda. — ELR, GMA News