Beneficiaries of the poverty-alleviating Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) can expect to continue receiving their conditional cash grants as the World Bank has extended the validity of the Philippine government's $600-million (over P35-billion) loan for the country's flagship safety net.
The Washington-based multilateral lender disclosed on Nov. 12 that it approved the reallocation of proceeds and closing date extension, among other amendments to the loan agreement for the Philippines Beneficiary FIRST Social Protection Project.
The acronym "FIRST" stands for "fast, innovative and responsive service transformation" of the targeted 4.4 million 4Ps beneficiary-households.
Finance Secretary Ralph G. Recto on Nov. 12 confirmed the World Bank's loan extension, which was announced by Zafer Mustafaoglu, the lender's country director for the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.
As Manila Bulletin earlier reported, the Department of Finance (DOF) last September asked to prolong the implementation and loan validity period of this investment project financing being implemented by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), which was supposed to end on June 30, 2025.
As such, official documents showed that the World Bank extended this loan's effectivity until June 30, 2026.
To recall, the World Bank approved this loan back in September 2020—at the height of the most stringent COVID-19 lockdowns, and then took effect in January 2021, during the Duterte administration.
The World Bank also approved the DOF's request to reallocate $95 million in loan proceeds from performance-based condition expenditures to the DSWD's Pantawid cash grants, which now amounts to $393.5 million.
The previous allocation for Pantawid cash grants under the original loan agreement was $298.5 million.
Also, the World Bank revised some of the loan's performance-based conditions, as requested by the DOF, as the project will now be implemented within a five-year period instead of four years.
In particular, the World Bank said the revised project description now includes "expanding the use of digital payments instruments by beneficiaries in receiving Pantawid cash grants; facilitating the assessment of socioeconomic status of beneficiaries using a standardized targeting system; [and] developing and operationalizing a grievance policy and information system for the [4Ps] and other programs managed by the DSWD."
The revision also allows "establishing a unified beneficiary database with verified records of the beneficiaries; adopting and implementing a strategy for a standardized targeting system by the DSWD; and targeting the support under the [4Ps] to the beneficiaries with children in the age group of zero to five years old," the World Bank said.
According to the loan restructuring paper previously seen by Manila Bulletin, the World Bank had assigned this project a "satisfactory" rating in terms of overall implementation progress towards achieving its development objective, which is to mitigate Covid-19's impacts on low income households' welfare as well as strengthen the DSWD's social protection delivery systems to become adaptive and efficient beyond the pandemic.
"The project experienced significant delays initially, aside from the immediate Covid-19 response, due to pandemic-related implementation challenges and weak ownership. However, things began to turn around in 2022 when new leadership took charge," the World Bank had noted, referring to the current Marcos Jr. administration.
So far, $489.11 million or 81.5 percent of the loan amount has been disbursed.
Last month, the World Bank said that "despite significant progress in key technical areas, it is unlikely that all performance-based conditions will be achieved within the project implementation period," such that "the no-cost one year extension of the project will allow many multi-year activities to be executed and bear fruits for improving beneficiary experiences."