THE national government is looking at the possible grant of a P15,000 cash assistance to farmers who will be severely affected by the El Niño phenomenon, Social Welfare Secretary Rex Gatchalian said yesterday.
Gatchalian said the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is now discussing the initiative with the Department of Agriculture (DA).
“Nag-uusap na kami ng Department of Agriculture para masigurado natin na ‘yung intervention na ‘yan ay papasok pa sa mga darating na araw (We are coordinating with the Department of Agriculture to make sure the intervention will arrive in the coming days),” said Gatchalian in a statement.
He said the DA will identify the farmer-beneficiaries who will be most affected by the expected dry spell that the El Niño will cause.
The weather bureau has said that the dry spell is expected to intensify in the last quarter of 2023 towards the first quarter of 2024.
Gachalian said at present, the DSWD is focused on the distribution of the P15,000 cash grant under the Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP) for small and micro rice retailers and sari-sari store owners affected by the implementation of the rice ceiling under Executive Order 39.
Under EO 39, the government imposed a price cap of P41 per kilo on regular-milled rice and P45 per kilo on well-milled rice.
In an interview during the state network’s Bagong Pilipinas program, Gatchalian said the DSWD has disbursed close to P100 million to around 7,000 retailers nationwide who have already received the P15,000 cash grant.
The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), which prepared the list of retailer beneficiaries, estimates the number of beneficiaries to reach 10,000.
He said they have already started the distribution of cash grants to sari-sari store owners last Monday, with around 2,000 sari-sari store owners expected to benefit from the SLP.
Gachalian said the DTI submits the beneficiary list to DSWD on a weekly basis as they first verify if the beneficiaries are affected and implement the price cap.
He said the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), meanwhile, is helping with the identification of the sari-sari store owners.
As this developed, DSWD Assistant Secretary Romel Lopez said Gatchalian will join President Marcos Jr. in the rollout of the Walang Gutom 2027: Food Stamp Program (FSP) in Caraga Region and the distribution of premium quality Jasmine rice to more than 4,000 beneficiaries in Dinagat Island, Surigao City, and Dapa, Surigao del Norte, all on Friday.
“Similar with the beneficiaries from Tondo, the new batch of beneficiaries from Caraga will be able to use their Electronic Benefit Cards to purchase a combination of nutritious food items from DSWD-accredited partner merchants such as the Kadiwa ng Pangulo stalls,” Lopez said.
The beneficiaries under the FSP pilot implementation will receive food credits worth P3,000 per month for six months.
The government hopes to fully implement the program next year. It targets to assist one million poor families.
Gatchalian reiterated that no actual cash is given to the beneficiaries but food credits through their Electronic Benefit Cards. The food credits can be exchanged for nutritious and healthy food items from accredited stores and Kadiwa ng Pangulo stalls.
In order to be able to regularly receive their monthly food credits, beneficiaries are required to participate in nutrition education sessions, attend skills training from the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), and join job fairs organized by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).
The FSP is undertaken by the DSWD in partnership with the World Food Program (WFP) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) secretary Arsenio Balisacan said the President’s decision to reject the proposed rice tariff cut was due to improving global data on rice, compared to when the proposal was made weeks ago.
“In the last couple of weeks, the Department of Agriculture showed us that world prices of rice have started to go down, the global rice production… is a bit better than what was previously the case when we were looking at the data,” Balisacan told reporters on Wednesday.
“The data then that we were looking at was showing negative growth in global rice production because of anticipation of the El Niño, but many countries that have now produced their production data show that the harvest was quite good, better than initially expected, and of course that changed the whole scenario,” he added. — With Angela Celis
