PH to get $600-M WB loan

The Philippines is set to secure another $600-million loan from the World Bank this month, this time to augment conditional cash grants under the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) for poor families.

World Bank documents showed that the Washington-based multilateral lender’s board is scheduled to approve on Sept. 15 the Beneficiary First (fast, innovative and responsive service transformation) Social Protection Project to be implemented by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

The project will cost a total of $10 billion over a five-year period, of which $9.4 billion will be shouldered by the Philippine government.

The bulk or $580 million from the upcoming World Bank loan will finance 4Ps grants to beneficiaries, accounting for 5.8 percent of the government’s total 4Ps budget over the next five years.

Immediate response for 4Ps beneficiaries during the first year of implementation will already amount to $300 million “given the urgent needs for funds during the response phase of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the World Bank said.

The remaining $20 million from the loan will be spent to support the DSWD’s social protection delivery systems and project management.

The World Bank said that as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown and the pandemic-induced recession, “the poverty level in the Philippines is projected to increase, though the scale of the increase is mitigated to some extent by the government’s social protection interventions.”

“The slowdown of the economy due to COVID-19 is likely to reverse the substantial progress in poverty reduction. The extended quarantine period has adversely affected jobs, particularly among informal workers, which had been fueling growth in household incomes among lower income groups,” the World Bank noted, citing that prior to the pandemic, the Philippines had been able to slash the poverty rate to 16.6 percent in 2018 from 26.6 percent in 2006.

Specifically, the World Bank financing will augment funds for beneficiaries of the 4Ps institutionalized by the government last year as the lender said the program was “responsible for a quarter of the total poverty reduction between 2006 and 2015 in the country.”

While the 4Ps was deemed a success, the World Bank pointed to some lapses when the DSWD disbursed the social amelioration program (SAP) to vulnerable households at the height of the lockdown.

“The COVID-19 response revealed that there remains some way to go in improving the adaptability and efficiency of the DSWD’s social protection delivery systems. The Philippine SAP had to depend on paper forms and manual processes, including distribution of physical cash to non-4Ps beneficiaries in the first tranche. This led to delays, misunderstandings and duplications, despite the best efforts of the DSWD,” the World Bank said.

“Although the second tranche used a website developed by volunteers to digitize forms and to collect bank and e-money account information for digital payments, a more sustainable, robust and DSWD-owned solution to future crisis response is needed. The significant delays and inefficiencies in the delivery of SAP benefits beyond the 4Ps households have highlighted the urgent need for the government to better leverage digital technologies and platforms and to take a more holistic and integrated approach to social protection delivery,” the World Bank added. INQ