The bad news is the pork barrel scam, compounded by the Malampaya Fund scandal, squandered over P10 billion — and counting. The good news is that a P67 billion chunk, among others, eluded the ladrones.
That fund is going to four million dirt-poor families in monthly grants ranging from P500 to P1,400. These have strings attached though: Parents must keep kids in school and get them immunized and dewormed. It provides impoverished pregnant mothers with pre- and post-natal checkups. Health personnel attend their deliveries.
Meet the “Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) Program,” a.k.a. Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program or P4. And credit president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for launching P4 in 2008. But graft crippled her government and enmeshed her and 24 subordinates in plunder charges. Thus, P4 never budged beyond a P4 billion token.
President Benigno Aquino III, however, ramped P4 to P39 billion, then P44 billion last year. In 2015, 4P could buffer 28 million beneficiaries. They’d be a quarter of the population then. “No social protection program in our history ever reached this scale,” notes Lila Ramos Shahani of Poverty Reduction Cabinet Cluster.
Maybe so. But see that in context. National Statistical Coordination Board estimates P180 billion is needed yearly for poverty alleviation. And population rises because birth rates still decline slowly.
CCTs have been around for a couple of decades. We track successes notched up by Latin American countries. Like Colombia, the Philippines is bugged by insurgency. Colombia’s “Familias en Acción” found that CCTs helped increase enrollment even in conflict-marred regions. University of Denver’s study “Conditional Cash Transfers and Civil Conflict: Experimental Evidence from the Philippines” asserts: ”There was a sharper drop in conflicts in villages where the program was introduced in 2009 than in those where (it) was delayed until 2010.”
Look at Mexico’s “Oportunidades” which helps five million poor folk in all 31 Mexican states. “Bolsa Familia” is the world’s largest CCT program, reaching more than 46 million Brazilians. Since 2011, Brazil lifted around 22 million out of extreme poverty. Share of wealth by Brazil’s poorest 20 percent increased from 2.6 percent to 3.5 percent.
Bangladesh has three million kids unable to attend primary school. A CCT program targeted street kids and other hard-to-reach children. Primary school enrollment surged by 9 percent. In Cambodia, high school attendance rose to 43 percent following CCT initiatives. Turkey reports a similar patten.
In Africa, however, supply constraints, shabby infrastructure, etc. hobbled conditional cash transfer projects, notes Harvard University’s School of Public Health. Present African CCTs focus on food insecurity rather than human development.
Today, the Philippine program keeps young children (3 to 11 years old) in school, a 2012 evaluation found. As in Nicaragua, this whittled down severe stunting among young children (6 to 36 months old) and boosted rates of immunization. Impoverished pregnant mothers got pre- and post-natal checkups. Health personnel attend their deliveries.
Significantly, “4Ps does not promote a culture of dependency,” reported World Bank. The Philippines’ program showed “positive results in elementary education school enrollment and beneficiary households spending more on health and education of their children,” Asian Development Bank’s independent evaluation department found.
Both put their money where there mouths are. World Bank released a US $300 million development loan to support anti-poverty programs and “to expand the CCT program,” ADB put in US $400 million.
The Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) cautions that school enrollment in 4P families slump when cut-off from cash transfers: 93 percent for children aged 13 to only a third (33 percent) when they reach 18.
PIDS suggests providing longer assistance from five to 10 years, The target would be to help until kids finish high school. They earn at least 45 percent more. Government is seeking to curb leakage estimated at 28 percent and expand coverage. Expanded coverage is in the works to take in indigenous people, “children with various forms of disability.”
But planners can be lulled into into the notion CCTs are a cure-all. No such economic instrument exists. Latin America has the longest tradition of CCTs. Yet that continent increasingly sees cash transfers as valuable complement, not a substitute for structural reforms.
In the Philippines, these do not merely mean budget juggling. Senator Miriam Santiago, for instance, calls on Congress to scrap, once and for all, the P25 billion congressional pork barrel from the P2.226 trillion national budget for 2014. In addition, she proposes integration into the money bill of off-budget sources of cash. That would include, among others, the P130 billion Malampaya Fund; P12.5 billion motor vehicle users’ charge; the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. Special Fund and the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office Charity Fund.
Great. But what about “restitution?” Justice and law requires that the thief return what is not his. Those who looted the pork barrel and Malampaya fund must repair the damage. It is not enough for Jinggoy Estrada to say others looted, too. The looters must adopt ex-tax collector Zacchaeus’ formula: “If I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”
Beyond that is a need to back the Ombudsman in prosecuting those charged. Justice is the bedrock for structural reforms.
CCTs “are worth serious consideration as part of an integrated poverty alleviation strategy,” says an International Fund for Agricultural Development. “But they are not a magic bullet.”