Food inflation reducing impact of Pantawid Pamilya cash grants

MANILA, Philippines - The increase in food prices is reducing the impact of cash grants being given to the country’s poorest of the poor, Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman has said.

Due to food price inflation – blamed by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) for the rising poverty incidence in 2014 – there is a need to increase the amount of cash being granted to beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), Soliman said in a press briefing yesterday.

She said the maximum P1,400 given to a 4Ps household-beneficiary is actually worth P800 when adjusted for inflation.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development chief said the government has to address the food security issue, if not increase the cash subsidies given to 4Ps beneficiaries.

“We have to really review and undertake drastic measures in addressing food security of the nation as a whole, and the poor in particular,” she said. “And not just production, it is accessibility.”

Soliman shared that she had discussed with NEDA director-general Arsenio Balisacan data from the Philippine Statistics Authority’s Annual Poverty Indicators Survey, which showed that poverty incidence among Filipinos rose to 25.8 percent in the first semester of 2014 from the 24.6 percent registered in the first half of 2013.

Soliman said this has led her to believe that without the government’s social protection programs, “we will be in a worse off position.”

“What we are providing… is the bare minimum,” she said.

 Meanwhile, more than one million children graduating from public elementary and high schools all over the country this month are from 4Ps household-beneficiaries, Soliman said.

Records show that a total of 863,046 public elementary school graduates and 333,673 graduating high school students benefit from the program.

The DSWD-National Capital Region (NCR) would be holding a graduation party for some 18,000 high school graduates in Metro Manila on April 10 at the Ynares gymnasium in Rizal province, Soliman said.

The party would also be a venue for the DSWD-NCR to link the children to scholarship programs of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and the Commission on Higher Education (CHED).

“There will be booths for CHED and TESDA so that they (children) can immediately register for whatever they want to get for skills enhancement,” Soliman said.

The DSWD chief said the graduation of 4Ps beneficiaries proved the objective of the program, which is to give “the worst off” in society “a fighting chance.”

She added that many of the graduates were the first in their families to receive a high school diploma and attain the opportunity of either attending college or getting a TESDA skills certificate that could lead them to blue-collar jobs here or abroad.

“What’s most important is that after high school, they can further their skills through TESDA, or they can start working and get a better salary because they already are high school graduates,” she said.

The DSWD expanded the coverage of the 4Ps in 2013 to include children of household-beneficiaries aged 15 to 18 years old. This was implemented following recommendations from experts to ensure that children get help until they finish high school.