Gloria orders doleouts hiked to P12B until 2010

1 million families to get money before polls

Malacañang will legitimize massive campaign funding for the administration party that would even use contributions from state financial institutions with the plan to infuse P7 billion more until next year for cash transfer programs of President Arroyo or the so-called Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4P).

The increased funding would expand beneficiaries of the cash doleouts to 1 million poor families from the current 700,000.

A Palace statement said Arroyo had directed Budget and Management Secretary Rolando Andaya to ensure funding for the 4P, a conditional cash transfer program being implemented by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

Based on next year’s P1.541-trillion national budget submitted by the President, 4P will get P12 billion or more than double this year’s P5-billion budget.

Press Secretary Cerge Remonde said the government will also tap government owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs) to help fund the expanded 4P.

“Secretary Andaya is working right now to ensure that (the increase in allocation) will be funded. If the program can be expanded to more than one million beneficiaries, the President will do that because she believes this conditional cash assistance to the poorest of the poor is very important. It is the most effective way to help our countrymen overcome poverty,” Remonde said.

Under the 4P program, a poor family qualifies to the scheme if it has a maximum of three children in school.

Beneficiaries of the program get a P1,400 monthly subsidy or P15,000 annually on condition that children in a family aged three to five years old attend a day-care center or pre-school at least 85 percent of school days; children aged six to 14 years old attend elementary school at least

85 percent of the time; children up to five years old get regular health check-ups and vaccinations; children aged six to 14 years old undergo deworming sessions every six months.

Parents are also required to attend responsible-parenthood sessions, while pregnant women needed to get pre- and post-natal care and be attended to during childbirth by a skilled or trained birth attendant.

University of the Philippines School of Economics professor Benjamin Diokno had said the budget next year should have more invested in infrastructure which generates economic activities.

Cutting down on infrastructure spending could be a serious miscalculation with the economy still wobbly, he said.

The combined effects of election spending and weak fiscal stimulus (will easily) fade, Diokno said.

He described the 2010 national budget as contractionary and the next administration may be saddled with a weak budget.

Diokno said the official 2010 budget showed only a P117.9 billion allocation for infrastructure that contradicts Arroyo’s budget message which stated that P161.3 billion would go to infrastructure.

Arroyo had ordered the DSWD to increase the coverage of the 4P scheme to 1 million families, or an additional 300,000 families from the current program, but Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral said funds for the current program were not enough to accomodate the increase in coverage.

Following a state visit to Brazil in June, President Arroyo ordered the number of 4Ps beneficiaries increased from 700,000 to one million.

The Philippines’ 4Ps is described as a “social development and poverty reduction strategy.”

At present, 4Ps covers 255 municipalities and 15 cities in 17 regions of the country.

Cabral said 4Ps will be expanded to provinces and cities “with large pockets of poverty that were not previously included as target beneficiaries.”

She said more local government executives had been asking the DSWD to include their areas in the program.

The program would likely benefit from a recent $500 million or nearly P25 billion loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB)

The Monetary Board, the policy-making body of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), had approved the loan which is expected to be released this month.

The Department of Finance requested portions of the loan to be used for government’s budgetary support as the fiscal shortfall is expected to end the year at a record level of at least P250 billion.

The loan was the first that ADB approved under its $3-billion countercyclical facility. It was approved on Aug. 24, 2009.

The facility was established in June this year to help ADB’s developing member countries increase their fiscal spending to address the impact of the global economic crisis.

Aside from the ADB loan that is not programmed under this year’s budget, the government also issued $750 million additional Republic of the Philippines (ROP) bonds last July to increase funds.

ROP issuance last July was the second for the government this year, following the $1.5 billion it issued in January.

NG is also ramping up its domestic debt instrument issuance to help plug the deficit.

The Bureau of the Treasury (BTr) is set to offer starting Sept. 15 three, five and seven-year retail treasury bonds (RTBs) with the volume set initially at P25 billion. –Daily Tribune