ADB extends $400-M loan for gov't pro-poor program
MANILA, Philippines - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Thursday approved a $400-million loan to support a Philippine government program for the poor.
The program wants to ensure that poor families keep their children in school, and that children and pregnant women get regular health checkups.
The ADB said the loan will be enough to cover 582,000 families over a period of 5 years.
"This is very timely, as the DSWD (Department of Social Welfare and Development) will increase the number of families receiving monthly cash grants to 2.3 million by the end of 2011," DSWD Secretary Dinky Soliman said.
Soliman, meanwhile, admitted the country may not be able to fulfill its Millennium Development Goal of reducing poverty rate to 12.5% by 2015. Poverty incidence in the country stood at 33% during the last government survey in 2006.
"It's gonna be tough to meet that condition, and we will see if we can come up with a revised target for that," Soliman said.
Around a third of the country's population of 94 million live in poverty.
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Loan? Who's going to pay for it?
So who's going to pay for it? Us taxpayers most likely. How sure are we that this will help them become more productive and eventually contribute to repaying the loan? Again gov't is just too eager to implement the program to (1) look good and (2) earn money (like payment for administration, monitoring and what have you). Sadly, this may only encourage the "beneficiaries" to be more dependent and just wait for gov't to do something for them...