Philippines

This note discusses two of the Philippines' biggest social assistance programs the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, the government's first conditional cash transfer... Show More + (CCT) program, and the rice subsidy program of the National Food Authority (NFA), one of the country's long-standing food-based social assistance programs with a focus on targeting efficiency and the benefits to the poor. The goal of the CCT program, which has an explicit poverty targeting mechanism embedded in the program, is to provide short-term cash assistance to poor households while helping to strengthen human capital of their children with the long-run vision of breaking the cycle of poverty. The goal of rice subsidy program is to ensure that low-priced rice is available in the markets to all consumers. Using benefit incidence analysis on the latest official household surveys of 2009, results suggest that both programs benefit poorest households the most. This has implications for the CCT program given the program was only launched with limited coverage in 2008. Despite having been implemented for one year as captured by the data, the program had already reached 12.4 percent of poor households in 2009. Moreover, about 71 percent of its beneficiaries in 2009 belonged to the poorest 20 percent of the population and accounted for 74 percent of total program benefits. Show Less -

Earlier this year, Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest (CGAP) teamed up with the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) Association (GSMA) (a global trade... Show More + association for the mobile communications industry) and McKinsey (a global management consulting firm) to measure the global market for financial services delivered via mobile phones (mobile money) in 147 developing countries. This is the first study of mobile money and the unbanked-those without access to formal financial services-estimated to be almost four billion worldwide. Show Less -

This country level trade brief summarizes insights from the world trade indicators database as well as analyzes national impacts and responses to the food crisis and... Show More + global recession. The trade at a glance tables for Philippines provide a snapshot of key aspects of trade policy and performance. Show Less -

The objective of the Second Women's Health and Safe Motherwood (WHSM) is to encourage behavior change by pregnant women to have facility-based deliveries by skilled... Show More + birth attendants. A combination of performance-based grants formed part of new government strategies to strengthen WHSM for disadvantaged women. Government of The Philippines (GOP) is giving high priority to WHSM services because of: 1) relatively high and stagnant maternal mortality ratio of 162/100,000 live births; 2) women having one more child than intended, on average; 3) the high population growth rate of 2.3 percent; and 4) poor access to WHSM services by disadvantaged women. Show Less -

This country level trade brief summarizes insights from the world trade indicators database as well as analyzes national impacts and responses to the food crisis and... Show More + global recession. The trade at a glance tables for Philippines provide a snapshot of key aspects of trade policy and performance. Show Less -

This Mindanao update covers the period from April to November 2007. This issue will focus on the following concerns: 1) May 11, 2007 Philippines elections results and... Show More + their implications. 2) National issues that impact on the stability of Philippine political economy. 3) Performance of the Philippine economy during the first half of the year. 4) Peace and order situation in Mindanao and the prospects of the resumption of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP)- Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) peace talks. 5) Progress of selected donor's assistance in Mindanao. 6) Developments in the peace process with the Communist Party of the Philippines CPP- National People's Army (NPA), including violation of human right issue. Show Less -