MANILA, Philippines - President Aquino approved a P1.9-billion budget that will allow the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to reassess the country’s poorest families.
The results will be the government’s basis for selecting a new set of beneficiaries for the government’s conditional cash transfer program and PhilHealth.
According to DSWD, the second nationwide assessment will be conducted this year and the result is expected to be released in the first quarter of 2015.
“This undertaking will update the existing database and provide data users a more relevant, timely and reliable basis in developing policies and programs that will effectively address the needs of the poor,†Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said in a statement.
Soliman noted that more than 15 million households will be assessed. The process dubbed as “Listahan†will be implemented by the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) this year. The DSWD is yet to give an exact date.
“It makes available to national government agencies and other implementers of social protection programs a comprehensive socio-economic database of poor families identified through objective and verifiable means,†she added.
The first nationwide assessment was conducted in 2009 when five million households from the 10 million assessed nationwide became beneficiaries of the program.
The DSWD said the program has improved, notably on the use of Proxy Means Test (PMT) model.
“The PMT is a statistical model that estimates the annual per capita income of families based on observable family characteristics such as housing condition, family assets, education and occupation of family members and access to basic services. The estimated income is compared with official provincial poverty thresholds to determine the family’s poverty status,†the DSWD explained.