Philippines needs higher budget to address malnutrition

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines needs to hike its budget to continue the implementation of the School-Based Feeding Program (SBFP) as malnutrition continues to be prevalent in school children, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

In a report, the USDA said the country must continue the SBFP to achieve the objective of addressing undernourishment among learners so they can have better health and nutrition.

The SBFP provides hot meals/nutritious food products  and milk to undernourished K-6 public school learners.

This is to encourage enrollment, improve classroom attendance, provide nourishment for growth and development, contribute to the improvement of their nutritional status, help boost immune systems, and enhance and improve health and nutrition values.

The US agency cited the 2019 Nutritional Assessment, Enhanced Basic Education Information System (EBEIS), which noted that among the 12.7 million school children assessed, 13.2 percent met the standards for stunted or wasted.

“Funding support from the LGU is necessary to widen the implementation of SBFP in the various localities. Additional budget for SBFG is needed to implement the strategy framework to improve education and lifelong learning as indicated in the Philippine Development Plan 2023-2028,” the USDA said.

Last year, the total budget under the General Appropriations Act (GAA) for the SBFP was nearly halved to P3.3 billion from P6 billion due to the Mandanas ruling, which transfered the budget to local government units (LGUs).

The Department of Education (DepEd), the implementing agency for the SBFP, issued supplemental guidelines to ensure that its target beneficiaries would still be covered despite the huge decrease in budget allocation.

For this year, the proposed budget for the program increased to P5.7 billion to cover 1.6 million wasted and stunted students. The DepEd expects the same budget in 2024 and 2025 for its Tier 1 planning parameters.

The agency also proposed Tier 2 planning parameters, increasing the cost to P30 for 120 days for food and P22 for 60 days for milk.

This means it would need additional requirements of P3.6 billion in 2023, and P4.8 billion in 2024 and 2025.

“The justification for the increase in food per child was based on the discussions with legislators to increase the quality of food and to cover the increasing cost of raw materials,” the USDA said.

To provide nutritious food products (NFPs), the DepEd partners with the Department of Science and Technology-Food and Nutrition Institute (DOST-FNRI) technology adaptors, farmers’ groups, cooperatives assisted by the Department of Agriculture, Department of Agrarian Reform, National Irrigation Administration and Department of Social Welfare and Development.

The agency also taps small and medium enterprises and local corporations for the supply of food and milk products.

As of Nov. 22, these organizations supplied P2.5 billion worth of food and food products to SBFP, 54 percent of which was allocated to the Enhanced Nutribun (E-Nutribun) program.

Launched in July 2020, the E-Nutribun is a science-driven solution that the government is pursuing to address hunger and malnutrition.

The DepEd provided the list of NFP for the SBFP developed by the DOST-FNRI. These products, particularly E-Nutribun and rice-mongo are also mentioned in the Philippine Development Plan 2023- 2028 for the government and private sector to intensify the development of safe, affordable, nutritious and energy-dense products to address malnutrition.

The Philippines has also joined the school meals coalition established under the United Nations Food Systems Summit.