The Duterte administration should continue to implement and expand the conditional cash transfer program to achieve its goal of eradicating poverty by 2040, the World Bank said Wednesday.
A working paper by the Washington-based multilateral agency on the impact evaluation of the CCT program in the Philippines said the safety net program remained an effective investment to eradicate poverty.
“The positive results from the second impact evaluation and spin-off papers [on nutrition, spill-over effects, regional heterogeneity, and child labor] solidified support for the continuation of the CCT program as an effective investment to break the cycle of poverty,” the World Bank said.
“Among other things, the second IE highlighted that the CCT continues to deliver on its development objective of keeping children healthy and in school. This finding was consistent with the results of the first IE that was released in 2012,” the bank said.
The report said the findings in the second impact evaluation were similar to the first one produced in 2012.
“In two rounds of IEs, the CCT program proved to sustain its developmental impact on poor households since it was piloted in 2007 and its effectiveness as a long-term investment for the government to combat poverty,” the report said.