Food stamp program seen to cut number of poor families

SOCIAL Welfare and Development Secretary Rexlon «Rex» Gatchalian said on Thursday President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. directed the department to develop new measures to fight hunger and poverty in the country prior to the latest Social Weather Station (SWS) study.

«This is the reason why the DSWD came up with the Food Stamp Program (FSP), which was designed primarily to alleviate the lingering incidence of food poverty and malnutrition among low-income Filipino households through the provision of meal augmentation worth P3,000 on a monthly basis,» Gatchalian said.

The FSP is presently in development, with its full implementation scheduled for the middle of 2024.

It will assist 1 million households categorized as «food poor» under the Philippine Statistics Authority's (PSA), as well as pregnant and nursing mothers.

Tondo, Manila, and the regions of Cagayan Valley, Bicol, Caraga, and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) are among the program's pilot areas.

Gatchalian said the President has authorized the FSP's regular budget for 2024.

«There is also the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, or 4Ps, wherein 4.4 million 'poorest of the poor' households, or 20 million individuals, continue to benefit from the program through the monthly subsidy for their children's education as well as the monthly health subsidy,» he said.

Gatchalian said the 4.4 million families receiving 4Ps benefits, together with the 1 million food-poor families receiving food stamps, are likely to further reduce the number of poor families in the coming months.

«This target of bringing down the number of people rating themselves as 'poor' is based on the positive note in the SWS survey showing that 25 percent of families rating themselves as 'hindi mahirap' or 'not poor' is a three-point increase from the June numbers,» he said.

In the most recent SWS poll, over half of Filipino families, or 48 percent, categorized themselves as poor during the third quarter of the year.

The poll, which was conducted from September 28 to October 1, indicates that around 13.2 million households consider themselves poor, which is more than the 12.5 million projected in June.