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News
January 20, 2011
Study reveals scant Filipino people
power on public funds
Real people
power over public funds in the
Philippines is still very limited. This
was the main message of Prof. Leonor
Magtolis Briones during her last
official lecture as professor of the UP
National College of Public
Administration and Governance.
“The new administration still needs to
prove that it is a democratic government
by institutionalizing citizens’
participation in all phases of the
public finance cycle,” said Briones
during her public lecture titled “Pera
ng Taumbayan, Para Sa Taumbayan”. .
“People should be directly involved in
the determining fiscal policy, revenue,
expenditures, borrowings and
accountability; and not simply play the
role of providing information to the
public,” explained Briones who has been
nominated by her College for the title
of Professor Emeritus.
Briones’ stated that citizens’
participation is least palpable and
least visible in the formulation of
fiscal policy. “The Medium Term
Development Plan (MTPDP) which is the
basis for fiscal policy, mandates
citizens’ participation largely in
social development and not necessarily
in public finance,” Briones said.
Briones’ lecture is based on a study
grant from the United Nations
Development Program on “Enhancing
Citizens’ Participation in Public
Finance”.
Meanwhile, the study showed the people’s
groups’ are not really able to
participate in crafting policies on
revenue; but are actually just informing
the public on issues such as sin taxes.
The situation is the same in the
accountability stage of public finance,
where people’s engagement is not
sustained as it depends on the issue and
not on systemic government reforms.
On the other hand, the study revealed
that there is sustained people’s
participation in determining policies on
borrowings, but the impact is limited.
“It seems that civil society positions
on debt are being ignored by the
government because the policy on
borrowings has not changed much even
after many years of sustained campaigns
by nongovernment organizations,” said
Briones, who has been teaching public
finance for already 50 years and has
served as the Secretary to the
Commission on Audit and Treasurer of the
Philippines.
Briones said that the stage of public
finance where Filipinos has shown great
influence is on determining
expenditures. “Social Watch Philippines
led sustained people’s engagement in the
entire budget cycle through the
Alternative Budget Initiative (ABI). The
impact on policies on expenditures is
clearly seen in the increased budget for
social development that SWP/API has been
able to push for in the General
Appropriations Act of the last four
years,” Briones said.
The study showed that since 2006, civil
society groups have been participating
in determining expenditures through
reforms in the legislature. It is only
in the budget for 2012 that civil
society groups will be able to actually
participate in the preparation of the
budget by the executive branch.
“It is a long way to go. There is very
limited peoples’ power on Philippine
public finance,” Briones said. “It is
important to know if the government
really listens to the people. The
challenge is for the new administration
to finally institutionalize people’s
participation in all phases of public
finance, not just in terms of providing
information to the public, but in terms
of actual participation in determining
the policies,” she said.
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