President Marcos Jr. is looking at reviving the food stamp program with the aid of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in a bid to address hunger in the country.
The President on Monday said he and ADB officials led by its president Masatsugu Asakawa discussed the food stamp program, one of the government’s pipeline projects proposed by Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Rex Gatchalian in February.
The meeting happened at the ADB headquarters in Mandaluyong City prior to the reception hosted for Marcos.
“One of the things… that is being developed, that is going to be of great assistance to our people is a proposal by the DSWD for a food stamp program, which I’m surprised that we have never had, but it is something that we can see that has been effective in other countries,” the President said.
DSWD spokesperson and Assistant Secretary Romel Lopez said under the proposal, some one million poor families would be provided with the food stamp that they can use to exchange for food items and basic necessities in grocery stores.
At the height of the pandemic in 2020, ADB in coordination with DSWD and the Philippine Army was involved in the $5 million Rapid Food Assistance for the Poor where more than 162,000 families or 810,000 people from 44 barangays in the National Capital Region benefited.
ADB has also been involved in supplemental feeding programs in schools.
The ADB is the country’s largest source of official development assistance (ODA).
According to the ADB 2022 Annual Report, the Philippines received a total of $2.99 billion in financial assistance last year, the fifth largest amount granted by the Manila-based multilateral institution.
It added that since joining the ADB in 1966, the Philippines has received more than $20 billion in loans, grants and technical assistance from the bank which went to a wide range of development initiatives including infrastructure development, poverty reduction, education, health and disaster risk management, among others.
