DSWD to launch food stamp program in select areas in July

THE Asian Development Bank (ADB) will provide around $3 million grant to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to initially fund the agency’s new “Walang Gutom 2027: Food Stamp Program,” which will start in the second half of the year.

DSWD estimates it will eventually need to secure P40 billion from taxes and multilateral organizations for the full rollout of the program.

In a news conference in Malacañang on Tuesday, DSWD Secretary Rexlon “Rex” T. Gatchalian disclosed the initiative is part of the efforts of the Inter-agency Task Force on Zero Hunger to reduce incidents of involuntary hunger in the country.

“The program is anchored with the Philippine Development Agenda 2023-2028 of President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. in addressing both hunger and poverty, and more particularly with alleviating the incidence of involuntary hunger among the Filipino families belonging to the lowest bracket income as identified and stated in the recent DSWD Listahanan 3,” Gatchalian said.

The so-called Listahan 3 of DSWD includes 1 million households, which do not earn over P8,000 per month and belong to the “foodpoor” criteria of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

Implementation mechanism

DSWD is now designing the mechanism to ensure the new program will be properly implemented in select local government units (LGUS) from July until the end of the year.

“There are working models out there that we can copy, tweak a little so that we can adapt it to the terrain of the Philippines,” Gatchalian said.

He noted among the countries which successfully implemented their food stamp program are Mongolia, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

The pilot will cover 3,000 family beneficiaries, which will each receive tap cards that they can use to buy select list of food commodities worth P3,000 from Dswd-accredited local retailers, which may include Kadiwa ng Pangulo outlets as well as micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMES) groceries.

“So we will not distribute cash, instead we will use food as currency,” Gatchalian explained.

DSWD said the five pilot areas will include—a former conflict area in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM); a geographically isolated region or province; an area in urban poor settings; a calamity-stricken area; and a rural poor area.

He noted that to qualify for the program, a family must have a member, who is employed.

“When you’re signed up [with the program], you have to go to your nearest Public Employment [Service] Office [PESO], get a certification that you are now being counted as part of the workforce,” Gatchalian said.

Funding sources

AFTER the pilot implementation, DSWD is eyeing to expand the number of the food stamp beneficiaries to 3,000, which will cost the government around P11 billion, by the first quarter of next year.

“Everything looks theoretically nice when everything is on paper, but when you implement it that’s the time you catch the leakages—leakages like what if they sell the food that they get—those are the things that we’ll be on the lookout for [during the pilot],” Gatchalian said.

Based on their rough estimate, Gatchalian said the budget for the program will reach P40 billion once they further expand its coverage to 300,000 households.

He said they are now eyeing other partners to finance the program such as the World Bank and the United Nations (UN).

“Recently we met the UN resident coordinator, Gustavo Gonzales, and he said there are other windows, we don’t have to fund this solely by ourselves. There are multilateral windows out there that the United Nations can help us tap into so that the burden of carrying the program is not solely the responsibility of the Philippines,” Gatchalian said.