Government junks two pro-poor arroyo programs

Malacañang will scrap the Kilos Asenso and Kalayaan Barangay programs, and the P1.5 billion in funds allocated for the two undertakings would be used to spur investment activities in local governments and augment the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) fund. “We are now rechanneling these funds to programs which have clearer rules and will have a more direct benefit to constituents of the local government,” Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said on Wednesday.

He added that even if both programs were originally intended to help poorer municipalities and barangays (villages), including those afflicted by armed conflict, the Department of Budget and Management found inefficiencies in the disbursement of the funds of the programs.

The Aquino administration is proposing a Performance Challenge Fund for local governments that would use the P1 billion intended for the Kilos Asenso project.

Abad said that under the proposed program for local governments, the beneficiaries will be more targeted, since there will be clearer implementing guidelines and that the Department of Interior and Local Government will take the lead in its implementation.

He added that since the required implementing rules and regulations of the Kilos Asenso program were not put in place by the previous administration, no fund releases were made for the program in 2009 and 2010.

Abad said that about P500 million has been incorporated in the 2011 national budget for the Performance Challenge Fund, which would provide counterpart funds for high-impact capital investment projects for local governments.

The annual P1-billion allocation for the Kalayaan Barangay program was rechanneled to augment the Conditional Cash Transfer program of the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

Meanwhile, the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) would be given an additional P124.635 million in funding.

Abad said that the Kalayaan Barangay program, which is administered by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), was scrapped because of a lack of criteria in identifying “conflict-afflicted” sites and lack of transparency in reporting results.

“The AFP only submits a list of completed infrastructure projects but does not report on the actual allocation of the project sites. Hence, the P1-billion allocation for the program this year has remained unutilized,” he added.

Abad said that since the CCT program has been proved to have been a very effective and “well-targeted” program for poverty alleviation, the funding for the program has been increased by almost three-fold to P21.194 billion next year.

Rep. Crispin Jesus Remulla of Cavite said that augmenting the CCT would only make poor folks embrace mendicancy since it encourages poor people to be poorer so they can receive money from the government.

But Abad countered, “CCT [existed] during the previous administration and undeniably it created huge benefits to the poor Filipinos. This has been proved even in Latin America and other parts of the world [that] were able to cut poverty by half through a program such as the CCT.” –KATrina Mennen A. Valdez REPORTER, Manila Times