Metro Manila (CNN Philippines) — More than 300,000 students graduated from high school this year as beneficiaries of the government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), according to the figures released by the government.
The program is the Philippines’ version of a conditional cash transfer program, which channels funds to poor families on the condition that they follow specific requirements. The 4Ps, for example, requires parents to attend family development sessions, and for child beneficiaries to enroll in school an maintain a class attendance of 85% per month.
Richard Bolt, the Philippines Country Director for the Asian Development Bank (ADB), told CNN Philippines in an interview on Monday (July 13) that the program currently carries about 4.4 million households, up from 6,000 families in a 2007 pilot program.
In a separate statement, Bolt said that the 4Ps is the world’s third largest conditional cash transfer program after Brazil and Mexico. Since 2010, the ADB has provided help to the government through technical assistance.
Bolt told CNN Philippines that the program entails several approaches, the fundamental of which is called the “listahan.”
The approach entails the identification of eligible households through an assessment of a family’s assets, educational levels, household opportunities, and housing conditions.
“It’s a good meter of income whether you’re poor or in need of, particularly, of health and education which [are] critical investments for human capital and the basis for better employment in the future. It does take its time for the program to work its way through to realize these benefits, but it is quite an effective method, he said.”
Bolt pointed out that the program is one of the best targeting systems of the ADB, out of all the 60 countries that have benefited from conditional cash transfer programs.
“There’s extra efforts in monitoring evaluation, what we call rigorous impact evaluation, which can also help to identify the effects of the program… [F]ull cash payments are made to households. There’s also a way of verifying that conditions have been met before they can meet these benefits.”
He pointed out that there are also systems in place to ensure that eligible households will not be excluded from the program. He said that exclusion of poor families is not necessarily a problem of fraud and corruption, but a statistical one because of “exclusion and inclusion errors.”
“The program is subject to [the] Comission on Audit… [S]o far, no disallowances have been made but there are constant efforts being made to minimize the exclusion and inclusion errors.”
