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The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have offered to finance the Marcos administration’s food stamp program that aims to support one million “food-poor” families from 2024 to 2027, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) said Saturday.
The “Walang Gutom (No Hunger) 2027” program will require an annual budget of P40 billion to provide the targeted beneficiaries P3,000 worth of food stamps per month.
“We will still have discussions with the economic team how to source. There are challenges given the limited resources that the government has),” DSWD Undersecretary Eduardo Punay said at a news forum.
“But since we have discussions with development partners such as ADB, there are others, like the World Bank. We have received offers actually for funding,” he added.
Punay said the DSWD will pilot the program from July to December with a $3 million (P168 million) technical assistance from the ADB.
Punay said the credits are not convertible to cash and cannot be withdrawn from an automated teller machine, like the cash grants under the “Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program,” a conditional cash transfer program.
Filipino families tagged as “food-poor” are those who belong to the lowest income bracket, or with a monthly income below P8,000.
Punay said President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has instructed the DSWD to utilize “Walang Gutom” and other programs to “empower or capacitate” the beneficiaries.
One of the conditions for a family to become a beneficiary is to get themselves involved in labor capacity building.
“We want them to enroll in training programs of DOLE (Department of Labor and Employment) and TESDA (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority) so that we can capacitate them into standing on their own,” he said. — Philippine News Agency
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