Are we winning the war on poverty?

"Is this even a doable target?"

The good news on the socioeconomic front is that the proportion of poor Filipinos declined in the first half of 2018, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.

The agency reported that poverty incidence—or the proportion of the population living below the poverty line to the total population among Filipino individuals—was estimated at 21 percent in the first half of 2018, below the 27.6 percent registered in the comparable period in 2015.

Poverty incidence among families stood at 16.1 percent in the first half of 2018, lower than 22.2 percent recorded in the same period in 2015.

According to the PSA, 16 out of 100 families were poor in the first semester of 2018. During the same period last year, a family of five needed around P10,481 per month to meet their minimum basic food and non-food needs.

The Duterte administration wants to bring down individual poverty rate to 14 percent by 2022. Is this a doable target?

That's possible, if the government can borrow an additional $300 million from the World Bank to continue the implementation of the government’s conditional cash transfer program for another two years starting next year.

The Department of Finance is seeking the loan from the Washington-based multilateral lender to partly finance the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s  Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program.

The Philippine Social Welfare Development and Reform Project 2 will cost $3.44 billion, but the government will shoulder the bulk or $3.14 billion.

According to the World Bank, the additional financing for the 4Ps will support and strengthen not only the implementation but also program monitoring and evaluation.

The beneficiary households will continue to be selected using ‘Listahanan,’ which is expected to be updated this year. The project will track compliance of households belonging to priority beneficiary groups. The priority groups under the 4Ps program are first, pregnant women and children aged zero to five years old, in order to address malnutrition; and, second, children aged 15-18 years old, to address high dropout rates.

The annual budget for the delivery of cash transfers under the 4Ps is around $1.7 billion, so the additional financing will cover about 9 percent of the annual budgetary amount over 2020 and 2021. The Asian Development Bank is also preparing a parallel project expected to provide additional financing to 4Ps cash transfers.

The World Bank believes that since the 4Ps program started to be implemented in 2008, it has “played a critical role in poverty reduction (by an estimated 1.5 percentage points per year according to 2015 data), expanding coverage to reach 4.4 million households, (around 20 percent of the country’s population), and providing benefits averaging 10 percent of income of the poor.”

Three rounds of evaluation since 2008 have convinced the World Bank of the program’s “continued impact in closing income gaps in school enrollment and use of essential health services.”

Poverty reduction should be the end-result of the national government's frenzied Build, Build, Build infrastructure project and various social services, such as education, health and housing. The administration should build upon the gains already made in previous ones, and tap as many sources of funding as possible from both domestic and foreign sources, if it's really serious in improving the quality of life of Filipinos now living on the margins of society.

Crooked cops get their comeuppance

If they thought they could get away with brazen disregard for the rule of law and outright violation of institutional rules, they are gravely mistaken.

The Philippine National Police bared the good news recently: A total of 2,528 rogue cops have been dismissed from the service and another 4,511 suspended for various offenses since President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office in July 2016 until February this year.

PNP chief General Oscar Albayalde himself made this announcement after the recent arrests of police officers involved in robbery-extortion and kidnap-for ransom cases.

He lamented that despite efforts to cleanse their ranks and the increased salary for police officers, some of his subordinates still get involved in lawless activities out of greed.

"No matter how much salary is given to us, if there are really people who are blinded by money, are too greedy and envious of the material wealth of others, these cases will happen," he told the media in Camp Crame recently.

Albayalde also assured the public that the PNP is implementing a system of checks and balances to ensure that police officers do not abuse their authority amid the government’s relentless war on drugs: "Some police officers may become abusive because the President said he will back us up, but he did not say he will back us up if we abuse our authority."

Scalawags in the police force are not a recent phenomenon. But while it's true that they're only a handful compared to the total number of personnel, one bad cop is enough to erode the credibility of the entire institution. Hence, the police leadership should enforce the strictest discipline not only among the rank-and-file, but also among the officer corps.

ernhil@yahoo.com