No, the CBMS survey is not your ticket to UPLIFT aid

By Rjay Zuriaga Castor

ILOILO CITY – Being surveyed under the 2024 Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS) does not automatically qualify a household for the government’s expanded Unified Package for Livelihood, Industry, Food, and Transport (UPLIFT) program, the Philippine Statistics Authority Region 6 (PSA-6) clarified.

PSA-6 Regional Director Nelida Amolar issued the clarification after several residents went to the agency to ask why their households were not included among the beneficiaries of the UPLIFT program of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) despite their participation in the CBMS.

“Some people ask why they were included in the CBMS but not in the list of beneficiaries. Others come to our office to verify whether they are included because they thought that once they were surveyed under the CBMS, they would automatically receive UPLIFT assistance. That is not the case,” Amolar said.

The DSWD has identified poor and near-poor households through the 2024 CBMS as among the potential beneficiaries of the expanded UPLIFT program, which provides targeted government assistance to vulnerable families.

The expanded program carries a PHP 55-billion allocation and began its national rollout in the third week of July. DSWD Secretary Rex Gatchalian has said it targets 7.5 million poor, near-poor, and low-income households.

Beneficiaries fall into three groups: 3.5 million grantees of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program and the Walang Gutom Program; 2.5 million near-poor households listed in the CBMS; and 1.5 million low-income members of the Social Security System.

The national government has presented the expansion as a cushion against the energy emergency, saying it seeks to keep roughly 1.2 million Filipinos, most of them near-poor, from falling into poverty.

The PSA conducted the 2024 Census of Population alongside the CBMS, collectively known as the 2024 POPCEN-CBMS.

“The activity is called a census because we conduct house-to-house visits and enumerate all households in every barangay. However, the CBMS itself is voluntary and not mandatory,” Amolar said.

“Only those who agreed to participate and gave their consent were interviewed during the CBMS enumeration,” she added.

During the enumeration, the PSA placed stickers outside surveyed households to indicate that they had already been covered and to help supervisors verify enumeration.

Amolar said the PSA processed and validated the information collected through the CBMS before turning it over to the Department of Economy, Planning, and Development (DEPDev).

She said the data then underwent further processing and validation, including proxy means test modeling, to classify households as poor, near-poor, or non-poor based on poverty-related indicators gathered during the survey.

According to Amolar, the CBMS collects economic and social indicators, including household income sources, employment, and access to health services.

She said the information helps government agencies and local government units identify household needs, improve development planning, and better target poverty-reduction programs.

“I hope the public will not doubt the process simply because they were not included,” Amolar said.

Amolar said the PSA also conducted field validation during the survey to verify household information.

That included revisiting homes whose occupants were unavailable during the initial enumeration, particularly those working on farms or living in remote areas.

However, she said field validation has been temporarily suspended pending further instructions from the PSA Central Office.

Amolar encouraged households that were unable to participate in the 2024 CBMS to take part in the next round of data collection in 2027.

She said the CBMS will serve as the primary database for identifying beneficiaries of various government poverty-alleviation programs because it contains multidimensional poverty indicators.

“We encourage those who were not able to participate in the CBMS to join the 2027 conduct because it is very important. Before, some people refused to be interviewed because they did not appreciate the value of the data being collected. Now they can see how important it is,” she said.

The CBMS is a nationwide data collection system that gathers household-level socioeconomic information to support evidence-based planning and identify eligible beneficiaries for government social protection and development programs.

It is mandated under Republic Act No. 11315, or the Community-Based Monitoring System Act, signed in 2019, which requires the collection of household-level socioeconomic data every three years.

DEPDev, which received and further processed the CBMS data, is the reorganized National Economic and Development Authority, elevated into a full department under Republic Act No. 12145 in 2025.

Even as the CBMS takes on a larger role in identifying beneficiaries of government assistance, Amolar reiterated that participation remains voluntary.

“The CBMS is targeted, which is why the government did not make it mandatory. Some individuals may not want to share their personal information. That is why respondents are first asked for their consent before they are interviewed,” she said.