Aid agencies urged to support PH antipoverty programs

Multilateral lenders and other development partners have been urged to align their plans for the country with the goals outlined in the government’s new anti-poverty strategy.

The National Economic Development Authority (Neda) in a statement said discussions had started between the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and several government agencies to flesh out how aid money for the Philippines could be used best.

These discussions follow the recent approval of the updated 2011 to 2016 Philippine Development Plan (PDP) under the Aquino administration.

“The updated PDP outlines what is urgent and what needs to be done by 2016,” Neda Deputy Director-General Rolando G. Tungpalan said in a statement over the weekend.

He said the updated PDP contained accompanying results matrices, which detail ways to measure the success of the plan.

“These… are essential for development partners in aligning their operations with our country’s goal of attaining inclusive growth,” Tungpalan said.

The meeting is the start of a series of dialogues between ADB and Philippine government agencies in firming up ADB’s lending and technical assistance pipelines for its Country Operations Business Plan 2015-2017.

Over the next three years, the strategic priorities of ADB’s assistance program would focus on areas such as employment and income generation, regional development, power, water sanitation, and public sector management.

Tungpalan said that apart from aligning ADB’s plan with the priorities of the Philippine government, multilateral lender should also consider the capability of agencies to implement a program or project under a particular institutional arrangement.

The ADB is the country’s largest source of aid financing.

“Alignment is always easy to measure.  What we also need to address is the issue of appropriateness of modality of institutional arrangements, which sometimes gets in the way,” he said.

“We have to address those risks, so that every program or project will contribute significantly to rapid and sustained economic growth and reduction of poverty in all its dimensions,” he added.

Under the PDP, the government plans to drive economic growth up to as high as 8.5 percent by 2016 from 7.2 percent last year.