Duterte signs law on community-based poverty monitoring system

By: Darryl John Esguerra, INQUIRER.net, 16 Jul 16, 2019

MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte has signed into law a measure seeking to establish a community-based monitoring system (CBMS) to improve poverty analysis in the country.

Duterte signed Republic Act 11315 or the “Community Based Monitoring System Act” on April 17.

According to the law, CBMS aims to generate “updated and disaggregated data necessary in targeting beneficiaries, conducting more comprehensive poverty analysis and needs prioritization, designing appropriate policies and interventions, and monitoring impact over time.”

It mandates a regular and synchronized data collection by cities and municipalities every three years, with the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) taking the lead as the implementing agency.

To assure Filipinos’ right to privacy, the law also said, participation in all data collection activities will be “purely voluntary.”

The latest decree likewise orders the creation of the CBMS Council to ensure “secure and efficient data sharing arrangements between and among concerned cities and municipalities and national government agencies to be used for their particular social protection and welfare programs and projects.”

PSA will head the CBMS Council while the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) and Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) will serve as council members.

In April, PSA reported that the number of poor Filipinos fell by 6.6 percent in the first half of 2018 compared to the same period in 2015.

According to PSA data, poverty incidence – or the proportion of the population living below the poverty line to the total Filipino population – in the first half of 2018 was estimated at 21.0 percent, lower than the 27.6 percent recorded in the first half of 2015.

This translates to 23.1 million Filipinos living below the poverty threshold in the first half of 2018.

The self-rated poverty rate also drops to a record low 38 percent, a survey from the Social Weather Station (SWS) showed last month.