BSP okays $280-million World Bank loans

MANILA, Philippines - The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has approved in principle two loans worth $280 million from the World Bank (WB) to finance the government’s food crisis response development policy operations and at the same time provide additional funds to the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

BSP Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr. said the central bank’s Monetary Board approved the $250-million Food Crisis Response Development Policy Loan and the $30 million additional financing for the ARMM regional government.

Tetangco said both concessional loans would be funded by the WB’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).

The Food Crisis Response Development Policy Operation was launched to strengthen social protection and safety nets to protect the poor.

The loan would be used to assist actions and measures that mitigate poverty such as lowering and stabilizing domestic food prices in the short term, mitigating short impacts of high food and fuel prices for the poor, improving policy coordination and institutional arrangements for social protection, and improving the impact, efficiency and efficacy of social protection programs through a comprehensive conditional cash transfer (CCT) program.

The executing agency for the program is the Department of Finance (DOF) while the implementing agencies are the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), Department of Agriculture (DA), National Food Authority (NFA), Department of Education (DepEd), DILG, National Nutrition Council (NNC) and the Department of Health (DOH).

On the other hand, the supplemental loan would be used to beef up the ARMM’s Social Fund Project (ASFP) of the regional government.

The IBRD is extending $30 million in additional financing support through ASFP to cover more villages from the six component provinces of Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, and Basilan, and the two cities of Marawi and Lamitan that have not yet benefited from the agency’s projects and services.

The ASFP was created by the national government in 2006 to implement in ARMM areas development projects funded through soft loans from the WB, IBRD, and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).