The national government is making steady progress in addressing the food needs of the poor and the needy.
That’s the assurance given recently by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in remarks before a sectoral meeting in Malacañang attended by officials and key staff of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) as he bared a significant drop in the number of food-poor families.
“We are doing a better job of feeding people who need it,” he said.
Proof of this is the DSWD report that the number of food-poor families slid by 300,000 last year from one million families with the implementation of the government’s Food Stamp Program (FSP).
According to DSWD Secretary Rex Gatchalian, the number of food-poor families has dropped to 700,000 at the time the FSP was designed.
“Because of this, we have more leg room now in this particular area,” he told the gathering.
The data are based on the files released by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) in 2023.
The FSP was established through Executive Order No. 44, s. 2023 as a flagship program of the national government through the DSWD to address involuntary hunger experienced by low-income households in the country.
Piloted from December 2023 to July 2024, covering 2,366 households, it provides eligible households with P3,000 worth of food credits monthly through an Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card, which the beneficiaries use to purchase select food items at KADIWA stalls and authorized retail stores.
As of mid-October, the program had 182,771 verified beneficiaries, of whom 89,772 households have redeemed their food.
The planned expansion will cover an additional 300,000 household beneficiaries in 2025 and another 400,000 in 2026 in 10 regions and 22 provinces. The goal is to support one million food-poor households by 2027.
The Food Stamp Program is a laudable project as it seeks to alleviate the plight of poor families living a hand-to-mouth existence and unable to feed themselves on a daily basis. It is in sync with the of the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) for 2023-2028 of the National Economic and Development Administration (NEDA) to achieve a decrease in poverty incidence from double-digit to single-digit level by the end of the term of the current administration.
It is one small step forward in the war on poverty in this country that requires the full support of the government, the private sector and civil society groups, not to mention the international community.
