By Emma Lynn Dadap-Cantal, Andrew M. Fischer and Charmaine G. Ramos
Since March 2020, the Philippines has implemented one of the world鈥檚 strictest and longest lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused severe disruptions in peoples鈥� livelihoods. The government鈥檚 emergency social protection response, the 鈥楽ocial Amelioration Program鈥� (SAP), has also been notably massive, introducing one-off near-universal income protection. It is an insightful case given that the country鈥檚 existing social assistance system has been celebrated as a model for developing countries, even though it has been mostly bypassed in the emergency response. Moreover, the country鈥檚 highly stratified and fragmented social policy system has resulted in implementation delays and irregularities that have fostered social hostilities and undermined the potential for such momentary universalism to have lasting transformative effects.
The Philippine government first imposed its 鈥榗ommunity quarantine鈥� on 15 March, which has since been extended until 30 June. Thus far, the pandemic has not been severe relative to evolving global indicators, with 302 confirmed infections per million people and 11 confirmed deaths per million people as of 25 June (although at only 5,760 tests per million people, these confirmed rates are likely to be significantly underestimated). However, as elsewhere in the Global South, the lockdown has thrown the country into an employment crisis given that more than 60 percent of its workforce is informal, most in precarious situations even when earning above the official poverty line.
In response, the government rolled out the 鈥楽ocial Amelioration Program鈥� (SAP), comprising at least 13 different schemes and with an estimated total budget equivalent to as much as 3.1 percent of the country鈥檚 GDP [1]. The largest scheme is the Emergency Subsidy Program (ESP), which has been allocated 200 billion Philippines pesos (PhP; about 3.5 billion euros), more than three times the combined budget of all the other schemes.Read More »
黑料社区 