WITH THE country now unlikely to meet its poverty-reduction commitment by 2015, the Aquino administration has set a goal of expanding the coverage of its subsidy program to 2.3 million poorest Filipino families by next year and further to 4.7 million by the end of its six-year term.

The short- to medium-term goal is an improvement from the estimated 1 million poorest Filipino households to be covered by the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program by the end of this year.

Economic Planning Secretary Cayetano Paderanga said the government had to allocate more resources for social services, particularly for the CCT program, as poverty remained a serious problem in the country.

Records showed that the country?s poverty incidence last year was still about a third of the country?s population, almost the same as the 33 percent registered in 2006 when the last poverty incidence report was issued.

Poverty data for 2009 will be released next month.

?Most economists in the country thinks of CCT not as a dole-out program, but more as an investment in human capital,? Paderanga said in a press conference Wednesday. He said investing in human capital was crucial in increasing the chances of the poor of getting decent jobs and augmenting their incomes.

Social Welfare Undersecretary Alicia Bala said in the same press conference that the executive branch had submitted to Congress a proposed budget of P23 billion for the CCT program for next year. Under that proposal, each of the 2.3 million poorest Filipino households would get an average of P10,000 per year.

Under the CCT program, the government provides monthly allowances to the poorest families. In return, recipient-households are required to send children to public schools and to have its members, especially mothers, to regularly visit public health centers.

Each recipient-household receives an allowance of P500 a month, plus P300 a month per schoolchildren for a maximum of three children.

Earlier, the Department of Social Welfare and Development said the poverty-reduction commitment made by the Philippines under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)--which is to halve poverty incidence by 2015 from the level in 1990s--was no longer realistic.

Paderanga said the administration was not giving up on the goal, and that the economic team was bent on intensifying the government?s anti-poverty programs.

?We want to restate that (earlier pronouncement from the DSW). The goal has indeed become more difficult to achieve, but we are still bent on hitting that target,? Paderanga said.

In early 1990s, poverty incidence in the country was estimated at over 40 percent.

Undersecretary Bala said the country?s goal on poverty reduction was to reduce the number of Filipinos living below the poverty line to only 24 percent of the population.

Bala clarified earlier reports that the goal was to reduce poverty incidence to only 12.5 percent by 2015. The 12.5 percent, Bala further clarified, is the targeted ?subsistence poverty incidence? by 2015.