WHILE the pool of poor people is shrinking, they are still wallowing in hunger.

Meanwhile, the rich are not only getting richer; they are also doing it faster.   

A survey of the Social Weather Stations showed some 4.5 million families in the country going hungry in the last quarter of 2011, up by some 400,000 families from the previous quarter.

Presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said the last-quarter survey showed self-rated poverty going down to just 45 percent in December, from 52 percent in the previous survey.

This means even though the number of people who rate themselves poor have gone down, many still remain hungry and in want.

The hunger rates in the two quarters are statistically alike given the margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points

Valte said the Aquino administration would continue “to aggressively pursue programs meant to address the needs of vulnerable sectors” by expanding the coverage of the conditional cash transfer program with a budget of P39.5 billion.

Budget Secretary Florencio Abad has also announced that some 198,000 indigent elderly will each receive a monthly pension of P500 this year after the government earmarked P1.2 billion for this segment of the population.

The amount is 38 percent higher than the P871 million given out last year to senior citizens aged 75 and older. Also, the number of beneficiaries rose by 43 percent to 198,370 from the previous year’s 138,960.

While the government is hard pressed to ladle out doles to the poor who must make do with the financial lifeline amid the rising cost of fuel and other basic commodities, quite ironically, the rich never had it so good.

In fact the money entrusted by the rich Filipinos to their fund managers have doubled in just three years, hitting P3.8 trillion as of last year.

Bangko Sentral Gov. Amando Tetangco Jr. said despite the gloom and doom across the globe, “the outstanding volume of assets managed under a fiduciary arrangement has significantly increased”.

“I am told, total assets under management by Fund Management Association of the Philippines members is about P3.8 trillion, more than double the level in 2008,” Tetangco was quoted by a broadsheet as saying during the induction ceremony of the FMAP in Makati City.

A fiduciary or trust organization acts as trustee, fiduciary or agent that manages financial assets of other people such as stocks, investments in government securities,  bank deposits, and highly liquid and investment-grade securities, loans, and other credit accommodations, real estate properties, and other assets.

Of the total assets managed by the trust industry, about P2.7 trillion were managed by banks and other financial institutions regulated by the BSP as of September 2011. That figure was up from just P1.27 trillion in September 2008.

The deep socio-economic chasm only highlights the inefficiency in the use of the government’s poverty-alleviation funds which are concededly one-way financial flows with absolutely no returns.

Private funds, on the other hand, are professionally managed to obtain maximum yields for the investors.

One way to stop throwing billions of pesos into the bottomless money pit called CCT is to stop treating it as an “unrequited transfers” but as a revolving fund and requiring its administrator – the Department of Social Welfare and Development – to exercise financial discipline in the cash disbursement and parking a portion of the cash pool in high-yield investment instruments.