As you heard earlier in the news, the IMF warns that the Government needs to rein in expenditure, and try to decrease the wage bill. The beneficiaries of the Boost Program need not worry, however,. That's not going anywhere anytime soon.
It's the Barrow Government's flagship pro-poor initiative, but whenever there is a need to cut costs, those unfortunately tend to be the first to go. Well, the CEO in the Ministry of Human Development says that Boost has a special place in the recurrent expenditure, which means that it's there to stay:
Judith Alpuche, CEO - Ministry of Human Development
"This is the Barrow administration's flagship; poverty alleviation program, the boost. We have not been cut, as a matter of fact I think the budget that we have for the then social assistance in 2008 and where we are now, it's the largest program moneywise, that the ministry of human development has. At around $5,000,000 or thereabout, so it's remained and we have actually moved it from a capital project into our current budget so it's anchored. We are just completing an impact assessment on boost because we're very serious in ensuring that we have a world class program. you may recall that in the early stages of introducing boost, the world bank came in and did and assessment and evaluation and saw that it was a solid program that we had accomplished quite a bit at world standard. Including what is called bankarization so around 98% of our beneficiaries belong to credit unions and are paid through that means which is a standard in the world. Nobody else has been able to achieve that level of bankarization. We use our proxy means test, this objective mathematical equation that we've developed along with the London school of economics by the way, to ensure that it's as objective as possible. It's not infallible but its objective and we have been ensuring that this program is up to international standards."
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