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MANILA - The Conditional Cash Transfer Program will remain the Aquino administration's main tool to reduce poverty incidence to 16.6 percent by 2015, the National Economic and Development Authority said on Wednesday.
"The government’s proposed budget for 2013 is P2.006 trillion, which is 10.5 percent higher than the P1.816-trillion budget this year. Next year, almost a third of the budget will go to social services," NEDA Director General Arsenio M. Balisacan said in a statement.
The CCT provides cash incentives to poor households that send their children to school and submit them to regular health check-ups. Cash is also provided to pregnant women who see a doctor regularly.
Balisacan said the CCT - previously called Pantawid ng Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) - helped improve enrollment in primary and secondary public schools between 2009 and 2011.
"Net enrolment rate in kindergarten, elementary and secondary levels have all increased from 2009 to 2011 while the levels in elementary increased from 88.1 percent in 2009 to 91 percent last year. Also, the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program already covered 3.1 million families as of April this year, exceeding the 2012 target of three million," Balisacan said.
He said the CCT would complement the steady growth of the economy, which alone failed to bring down poverty incidence during the 2000-2009 period, which Balisacan describes as the country's "lost decade," a description once given Japan in the late 1990s when its economy stagnated.
Data from the National Statistical Coordination Board showed that the proportion of poor Filipinos stood at 26.5 percent in 2009, down from 28.4 percent in 2000 but unchanged from 26.4 percent in 2006.
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