POLICY PAPERS
Comments on the UN Financing for Development Paper vis-à-vis Debt Issues
by Maria Teresa D. Pascual, Freedom from Debt Coalition
Clearly absent in this UN discussion paper is a section that deals with how to get developing countries out of the debt trap that many already find themselves in, and how to avoid it for those developing countries not yet caught in the trap. Any serious discussion on financing for development must take this into consideration. As evidenced in the Philippines, the struggle to develop is inextricably tied to the struggle to get out of indebtedness. Yet the experts hired by the UN to draft this paper fail to recognize this. Worse, in identifying new financing for development for middle-income countries like the Philippines, the paper implicitly recommends that we simply borrow more, or enter into contracts with the private sector that have tended to be extremely disadvantageous to the government, and thereby the people.
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Comments on UN Financing for Development: Systemic Issues
by Maria Teresa D. Pascual, Freedom from Debt Coalition
This section deals with global economic governance, and with the institutions that set and enforce global rules of economic behavior. It also proposes the formation of new institutions to fill existing vacuums in global governance. The recommendations flow out of the following premise: “Global interdependence needs global governance.” While this premise carries a simple, clear and ostensibly sensible message, it misses out on many realities of global “interdependence”. For this reason, the recommendations of the UN Financing for Development paper with regard to systemic issues are limited and are not expected to do much to address global economic governance.
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SOME IMMEDIATE ISSUES IN OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE TO THE PHILIPPINES*
by Eduardo C. Tadem
Developing countries like the Philippines have long relied on Official Development Assistance (ODA), or “foreign aid” to finance economic development. In the fifties and early sixties, ODA was used primarily for rehabilitation and institutional development, was provided by the United States, and consisted mainly in grant assistance (ILO 1976). ODA provided 10 percent of foreign exchange and one percent of GNP during these two decades.
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Financing for Development: Domestic Resource Mobilization
by Filomeno S. Sta. Ana III
This paper attempts to develop a civil society policy agenda on domestic resource mobilization towards influencing the global Financing for Development (FfD) process initiated by the United Nations.
The preparations for the FfD include a series of United Nations meetings that will come out with analyses and recommendations on a broad range of financing and related issues. The process will culminate in an international conference in March 2001.
The FfD is an opportunity not only to address the global concerns and their impact on the Philippines but also to provide a boost to the national reform initiatives. The FfD can thus be a means to speed up the tax reform agenda that the Macapagal-Arroyo administration has to put in place.
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Critique Of The Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (Mtpdp) For 2001-2004 And Some Policy Recommendations From The Basic Sectors
by Arnel F. de Guzman*
Any discussion on financing for development cannot be complete without a critical look at the Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan or the MTPDP. In fact, it should be the starting point. This is because the blue print that outlines in bold strokes the development path that the Philippines will traverse under the incumbency of the executive leadership is contained in the MTPDP. Institutionalized by Marcos a few years after seizing power through martial law, the plan is crafted by the government’s foremost think tank—the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), a government agency created by a presidential fiat for that purpose.
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Of Paper Boats and Sinking Economies
Development in an Era of Open Trade: The Case of the Philippines
by Atty. Wigberto E. Tañada
1st GO-NGO Forum on Financing for Development
Edsa Shangri-La Hotel, Mandaluyong City
12 October 2001
Let me go to the heart of the issue: Is openness to international trade the magic formula that will lift the sinking Philippine economy from the mire? Or is it just a mere paper boat that will keep the economy afloat only in rosy promises and presidential speeches?
For some decades now, our government has looked at international trade as the solution to our development problems. Since the 1980s, successive administrations have pursued a series of unilateral trade liberalization programs covering every sector of the economy from manufacturing, services and agriculture. To say, however, that our government independently pursued these programs would be utterly false. These programs were actually loan conditionalities imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
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