Dole program budget to be raised to P39B

The budget for the conditional cash transfer program, known as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (PPPP), will be increased from P21 billion this year to P39 billion in 2012, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said at the Clark Freeport in Pampanga on Monday.

The program will cover three million poor families next year.

“The PPPP is a lifeline to help overcome poverty. The economic programs are the ones that directly solve poverty,” Abad said after speaking at a forum of partners of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in implementing the program.

Under the program, the government provides monthly stipends of P300 for every child of school-going age and P500 for the mother. A family can get a maximum of P1,400.

Touted as an investment in the next generation, the program requires children to be in school 85 percent of the time and for parents to bring their children to a health center for monthly medical checkups and family development sessions.

At least 222 civil society groups, nongovernment organizations and volunteers have signed a memorandum agreeing to help the DSWD monitor the implementation of PPPP.

The program’s budget in 2012 would no longer come from foreign loans. The money will come from government revenues, according to Abad.

Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman said the DSWD had asked for a budget increase to cover the 2.3 million beneficiaries and a new batch of 700,000 recipients.

Abad and Soliman said that apart from the new batch of beneficiaries, all recipients would receive the aid year round. The beneficiaries came in different batches last year.

The budgets secretary said the “lifeline program” for the poor should not be permanent.

He said the administration was seeking to reduce the poverty incidence to 16.6 percent from 33 percent through the PPPP and other antipoverty programs by the end of President Aquino’s term in 2016.

Meeting this target and providing quality jobs for the beneficiaries should provide the impetus for the next administration to discontinue it, he said.

“This is just a lifeline, but it’s not for a lifetime. P70 billion is too heavy a burden for the government. Besides it’s not good to create a mind-set for people to be too dependent on government,” Abad said in the forum at the Holiday Inn Hotel.

Initiated by the Arroyo administration, the CCT was carried on by the Aquino administration, making it its centerpiece antipoverty program.

It has come under criticism from several sectors for promoting a “dole-out” mentality among the poor.

Abad, however, said the program would not be complete if the poverty incidence was reduced without empowering the beneficiaries.