The Department of Social Welfare and Development will scale up the implementation of the Walang Gutom 2027: Food Stamp Program by July next year, according to a senior agency official.

"The full pilot run implementation for the 3,000 beneficiaries will start this December until May next year. By next year, we will scale up to 300,000 beneficiaries. This will run mid-next year or starting July 2024," DSWD Undersecretary for Innovations Edu Punay said.

Based on the scale-up plan, the other 600,000 beneficiaries of the FSP will be catered to by the year 2025 to fulfill the 1 million target families who have "food insecurities" and are living below the food and poverty line.

"This scale-up plan is programmed by phases. We have designed an implementation plan.," Punay said.

The DSWD official also bared that the department is identifying other ways to deliver the program as part of the scale-up plan for FSP.

"In the implementation of the pilot run of this program this year we will be testing other modalities. We are not limited to EBTs (electronic benefits transfer) and scope-system of the WFP (World Food Programme)… We are looking at the use of QR code para wala na iyong card [so we can omit the use of cards]," Punay said.

The DSWD is rolling out the pilot run of the program in Tondo, Manila and Dapa town in Surigao del Norte, while simultaneously conducting social preparation, identification of beneficiaries and registration of retailers for the program's scaled-up implementation next year.

According to Punay, part of the scale-up plan is to launch the program in three other areas identified by the DSWD with the assistance of the World Food Programme and the Asian Development Bank. These include San Mariano in Isabela, Garchitorena in Camarines Sur and Parang in Maguindanao.

The FSP provides a holistic approach to addressing involuntary hunger by providing its beneficiaries access to monetary-based assistance and enabling to become more productive citizens by requiring them to participate in capacity-building and training to improve their employable skills.