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Tungo sa Paggugol na Tapat, Sapat at Nararapat
Foreword by Prof. Leonor Magtolis Briones
 The citizen’s alternative budget proposal for
the 2011 national budget titled “Tungo sa
Paggugol na Tapat, Sapat at Nararapat” was
developed through the contributions of various
citizens’ groups in terms of increasing the
budget for social development and ensuring that
public funds are actually geared towards
uplifting the lives of the marginalized.
The principles behind the citizens’ alternative
budget proposals and the proposed alternative
sources of funding, as well as our analyses on
macroeconomic assumptions are all products of
citizens’ long involvement and dedication of
working at the grassroots and efforts to
influence national priorities towards
socioeconomic justice and genuine democracy.
For citizens’ groups, it was a historic moment
in 2006, when Social Watch Philippines went into
partnership with progressive legislators from
the House of Representatives and the Senate in
order to increase available allocations for
social development, in what is now known as the
Alternative Budget Initiative (ABI). Civil
society organizations worked closely with
congressmen and senators in formulating
alternative budget proposals in four areas:
education, health, agriculture and the
environment.
As proposed by ABI, a total of Php 5.3 billion
was added to the 2007 national budget, while Php
6.3 billion was added to the 2008 budget for
education, health, agriculture and the
environment. In 2009 and 2010, the national
budgets were increased by Php 6.7 billion and
Php 5.4 billion respectively for the above four
categories.
Last August 25, the President submitted the
proposed 2011 National Budget to Congress. This
cannot be considered completely as his budget
since the budget cycle started last May 12 with
the budget call. When President Aquino took over
the reigns of government last July 1, the budget
was practically finished already.
Nonetheless, there are features which augur well
for budget reform. The most important of these
is the effort to reach out to the public,
particularly civil society. In his budget
message, the President asked the private sector,
civil society and the general public to help
monitor the implementation of the budget.
This is a good enough start even as Social Watch
Philippines is of the view that Participatory
Budgeting is not only about monitoring the
implementation of the budget. It is also about
effective public participation in the entire
budget cycle—starting from the preparation phase
to accountability.
This is the first edition of the ABI budget for
2011. We plan to come out with the second
edition which will further harmonize the
different proposals for education, health,
environment and agriculture.
.
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Committee On Appropriations Supports Campaign
For 2011 Alternative Budget
The House Committee on Appropriations organized
a special hearing for alternative budget
proposals of civil society groups on September
30, 2010 at the House of Representatives. The
House Appropriations Committee has been holding
special hearings for the Alternative Budget
Initiative since 2007.
The Congressmen who participated in the budget
hearing were Commitee Chair Cong. Joseph Emilio
Abaya, Cong Edcel Lagman, Cong Nur Jaafar,
Cong. Irvin Alcala, Cong Jose Carlos Cari, Cong
Bai Sandra Sema, Cong Emile Ong, Cong Jocelyn
Limkaichong, Cong Maria Carmen Zamora-Apsay,
Cong. Carlos Padilla, Cong. Teodorico Haresco
and Cong. Henedina Abad.
Prof. Leonor Magtolis Briones, SWP lead convenor,
provided the overview, macroeconomic assumptions
and general discussions on the ABI proposals.
The alternative budget proposals for specific
sectors were presented by Jonathan Ronquillo for
budget proposals on the environment, Jimmy Tadeo
for agriculture, Flora Arellano for education
and Merci Fabros for health.
In her
presentation, Prof. Briones stressed that
Congress should not only look at the minute
provisions of various agencies of government,
but also look at overall framework and ask who
are benefiting and paying for costs of this huge
budget. She said that the greatest challenge for
Congress is on determining priorities on budget
spending as the budget is the most powerful
expressions of the priorities of the government.
The ABI’s message is that the budget should be
focused on where the poor are, such as the
agriculture and fisheries sector, women,
indigenous peoples groups and Mindanao.
She also emphasized the situation of high Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) growth, but same levels
of unemployment and escalating incidence of
poverty and hunger.
House Committee on Appropriations Chair Joseph
Emilio Abaya, Cong. Edcel Lagman and other
members of the Committee welcomed the
alternative budget proposals of citizens’ groups
under the Alternative Budget Initiative (ABI)
for the 2011 National Budget.
“We welcome the alternative budget proposals and
cooperation of the nongovernment organizations
as well as their advocacies for budget reforms
in our country,” said Committee Chair Abaya
during the House Committee on Appropriations’
hearing on the alternative budget proposals held
recently at the House of Representatives. “We
want the opportunity to hear the proposals on
the budget of nongovernment organizations and
share and integrate ideas that would lead to
incorporation of the alternative budget
proposals to the 2011 General Appropriations
Act,” said Abaya.
 The
Committee Chair also emphasized that
the Congressmen also welcomed the SWP-ABI’s
proposals for joint civil society-legislature
oversight on the budget. “We welcome the
citizens’ groups call for budget oversight. The
House Committee on Appropriations intends to
plan spend more time on oversight so Congress
can fully exercise its function. We also support
civil society in their budget tracking efforts
by offering our services when they have
difficulties in getting information on the
budget,” he said.
Congresswoman Jocelyn Limkaichong assured the
group that Congress agrees with the alternative
budget proposals for increased allocations
especially for the marginalized sectors. “It is
good to hear from different sectors like Social
Watch. This administration promised that the
Filipino masses are his bosses. This simply
meant that whatever budget we have should reach
the grassroots, just like what SWP is saying”
she said.
Meanwhile, Congresswoman Henedina Abad suggested
that nongovernment organizations should also be
involved in the budget execution phase. “Those
who proposed the alternative budget proposals
should also know how much they have influenced
the budget process by knowing where the money
really went,” she said.
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SOCIAL WATCH PHILIPPINES' POSITION ON THE
PANTAWID PAMILYANG PILIPINO PROGRAM
 The
Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program (4Ps) was
launched in late 2007, as the Philippine
government’s version of the conditional cash
transfer. In exchange for the provision of cash
grants for education and health activities, poor
families need to comply with a set of
conditionalities such as ensuring school
attendance of children, regular visits to health
centers for immunization, preventive health
check-ups and maternal care. The program runs
for five years for household-beneficiaries.
We believe that the 4Ps is an important relief
measure. The usefulness of such a measure needs
to be underscored in light of the fact that many
poor Filipinos are desperate to survive these
trying times. Social Watch-Philippines has
recently conducted a preliminary study and
survey of 4Ps beneficiaries and has found out
that for many beneficiaries, this is the first
time that they have experienced direct support
from government on a relatively sustained basis
and are therefore grateful for the support.
Furthermore, investments in education and health
improve the chances of children for upward
social and economic mobility.
Nevertheless, we are concerned with the current
stance of government on the 4Ps which seems to
treat the 4Ps as a magic bullet for poverty
reduction. Our concern is based on the following
reasons:
1. The 4Ps does not
address all the dimensions of poverty and
vulnerability. The 4Ps program is
patently a poverty reduction program designed to
address issues on maternal mortality and child
mortality (the latter mostly through the
provision of vaccines and cash), as well as keep
children in school for five years. Other
vulnerable groups like poor senior citizens, the
chronically sick, people with disabilities, the
millions of out-of-school, and functionally
illiterate or the unemployed poor are not
covered by the program. As such, other
anti-poverty programs designed to address the
other dimensions of poverty must likewise be
prioritized.
For example, tuberculosis remains one of the
leading causes of morbidity and mortality among
the Filipino poor[1] and yet, the budget for the
Indigents’ Program under the Philippine Health
Insurance Program was reduced by thirty-three
percent for 2011. Furthermore, we note that
twenty percent of school age children and youth
are out of school, and yet they get less than
one percent of the education budget[2]. While
the 4Ps is designed to attract the out-of-school
to re-enroll, studies conducted locally and
around the world have shown that a significant
majority of the out-of-school will never return
to school even with attractive packages. To
continue, the housing budget was slashed by half
for 2011(from P11 B in 2010 to P5.6 B), a move
that will certainly negatively impact on the
rising number of informal settlers in dire need
of mass housing. Finally, the majority of the
poor are in the rural areas and yet we note that
public investment in agriculture, fisheries and
forestry remains low. Much of the rationale used
by government to justify low and or decreasing
levels of public spending in these areas is to
be able to free up and provide additional
sources for the 4Ps, a policy position which we
disagree with.
We believe the government should not reduce
public spending for other pro-poor programs and
re-channel the freed up resources for the 4Ps,
which only address a few dimensions of poverty
and vulnerability and therefore only targets a
sub-set of the total number of poor.[3]
2. The success of the
4Ps, which addresses the demand side, through
the provision of cash grants, requires ensuring
the supply side (e.g. availability of health,
education and transport facilities and
services). 4P areas are, by program
definition, among the poorest. No amount of
conditionalities will work if there is a lack of
schools, health clinics, and means of transport
in 4P areas. The fact that Philippine public
investment in education[4] and health is low and
has generally declined between 2000 and 2006 at
both the national and local government levels
does not augur well for the 4Ps meeting its
stated objectives. This means that public
investment in education and health must
significantly increase. Stress is made on
ensuring the quality of services.
3. “Thanks for the cash
but we need jobs.” The Social Watch
study reveals that most of the beneficiaries it
surveyed expressed gratitude that with the cash
grants, the health and education status of their
families were improving. Nevertheless, an
overwhelming majority of beneficiaries said that
what would lift them out of poverty was access
to regular employment. This underscores the fact
that one of the most important elements in the
fight against poverty is productive employment,
an important component of MDG 1. In this light,
Social Watch Philippines calls on the government
to put quality job creation (which includes
‘green jobs’) and the protection of workers
rights, including women’s rights, in the
forefront of its anti-poverty agenda.
4. What works in other
countries may not necessarily work here.
Context matters. While conditional cash
transfers (CCTs) around the world share
similarities, features vary across countries,
and more importantly, the economic and social
policy settings in which these CCTs are embedded
in, also vary. For example, Mexicos’
Oportunidades, apart from education and health
cash grants, are accompanied by cash transfers
for food and for the elderly while in Brazil,
Bolsa Familia is part of a larger economic and
social protection scheme composed of
‘complementary actions’ and services to poor
families. Among the significant ‘complementary
actions’ are employment creation, provision of
income-generating activities, and improvement of
housing conditions.
While the Aquino government recognizes that the
4Ps as a ‘stand alone’ program will not work and
has taken steps to link it to other economic
programs (e.g., Kalahi-CIDDS and Self Employment
Assistance-Kaunlaran or SEA-K), we believe that
there is a need to refine such a strategy. For
one, the highly micro-ized and project-ized
nature of Kalahi-CIDDS projects has generated,
at best, localized impact on poverty reduction
and has not made a dent on reducing over-all
poverty. Second, data has shown that SEA-K
activities revolve mostly around low-value trade
and commercial activities with limited impact on
poverty reduction as well.
5.
Community organizing and mobilization are key
ingredients to people’s empowerment.
We believe that community organizing and
mobilization should play a key role in the
empowerment of household-beneficiaries. The
government recognizes this as seen by its
linking up the 4Ps with Kalahi-CIDDS (the latter
being a community-driven development program).
Based on the initial data that emerged from the
Social Watch study, there is a need to ask: what
is the current status and quality of community
work, beyond the required parenting seminars, of
which women are disproportionately represented?
While one outcome of the 4Ps is the increased
capacity of women to procure basic necessities,
this also places more obligations and
responsibilities on their shoulders[5],
including increasing their workload. As such,
more gender-aware interventions are needed.
Furthermore, there is a need to examine how
well-organized the community committees are, and
what other functions these assume beyond
organizing and ensuring attendance in parenting
seminars.
6. Loans for what?
Finally, we question borrowing US$405 M
from the World Bank and US$400 from the ADB for
the 4Ps because it not only increases our public
indebtedness, which is cause for concern in
itself, but more so because the government is
infusing massive investment on a strategy, as it
is currently conceived, that, at best, will have
very limited impact on poverty reduction.
In this light, we call on government to do the
following:
Increase public spending in the various pro-poor
programs of government with stress on education,
health, agriculture, housing, environment (e.g.,
see proposals of the Alternative Budget
Initiative);
To come up with a comprehensive poverty
reduction strategy, which includes both economic
and social policy, and locate the 4Ps within
this framework. Financing for the government’s
anti-poverty reduction strategy should flow from
such a framework.
In the immediate, we call for an independent
monitoring and review of the 4Ps, and to include
civil society participation. Part of the review
is to gauge the capacity of the Department of
Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to handle
the further expansion of the 4Ps. This review
should be included in the 2011 budget. Program
transparency should also be ensured, including
easy access for the public to relevant
information on the 4Ps.
Furthermore, we call for the conduct of a
comprehensive program performance audit by an
independent body, and to include civil society
participation, by the end of 2011, before
further expansion of the 4Ps. The audit should
determine whether the program as designed and
implemented yields the expected outputs and
outcomes.
We know that the causes of poverty are complex
and interlocking and based on the evidence of
other country experiences, so effectively
combating it will require a combination of
economic and social development policies that
require sustained economic growth, productive
employment, asset reform and comprehensive
social policies which includes universal social
protection measures.
For as long as the Aquino government does not
have a strategy that provides a holistic
perspective and addresses the structural
constraints to poverty reduction, its
anti-poverty efforts will remain short-term
palliatives. .
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Citizens'
Alternative
Report on the
MDGs Book Launch with
Senate President
Enrile and House
Speaker Belmonte
 The
Citizens’ Shadow Report on the MDGs titled
"WINNING THE NUMBERS, LOSING THE WAR: The Other
MDG Report 2010" was
successfully launched at the Speakers' Loungue
of the House of Representatives
on September 15, 2010 in time for the UN
Millennium Summit in New York which was also
attended by the Philippine President.
The book launch was attended by about 60
representatives of various nongovernment
organizations, Congress beat reporters and no
less than House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte and
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile.
During the program, Former national treasurer
Leonor Magtolis Briones, SWP lead convenor, said
that it is obvious that the financing gap on the
MDGs is a major reason on why the poverty
situation is worse in 2010 than when the country
started on the MDGs in 2000. She said that an
MDG-sensitive budget will correct the
inequalities. There should be a budget to
provide education, health, decent work, food
security for all -- not just for a half or for
two-thirds of the poor – will ensure that no
Filipino is left behind.
“The shadow report ‘Winning the Numbers, Losing
the War: The Other MDG Report 2010’ intends to
feed into the annual planning and budgeting
processes and the new regime’s six-year
blueprint,” said Isagani Serrano, convenor of
Social Watch Philippines and editor of the book.
“Our hope is to see an MTPDP and local
development plans that are truly MDG-sensitive
and committed to deliver on the minimalist MDG
promises,” he added.
Serrano said that what is needed is for the
budget to support an MDG catch up plan that
focus on where the country is lagging
behind—poverty, education and maternal health.
He stressed that the national budgets beginning
2011 until 2015 must be MDG-dedicated and that
the General Appropriations Acts (GAAs) to be
enacted for those years should be pre-audited
for their MDG-sensitivity.
“The Citizens Report on the MDGs is a brutally
frank assessment of government efforts and
failures on its commitment to the MDGs. I call
on all government agencies involved in the
implementation of programs to work closely with
those who wrote the Citizens MDG Report 2010,”
said Senator Enrile. “We are racing against
time; millions of lives must be protected. We
need to put our acts together and save as many
Filipino lives as we can,” he added.
“Government has to invest more on programs
related to MDGs. We need to honestly evaluate
our policies, and address the issues and massive
level of corruption, especially in the poorest
regions of the land,” Senator Enrile said. “The
lawmakers of this country have long recognized
that investments in healthcare, disease control,
and environment conservation are long term
strategies for development in this country. To
end poverty, the best thing to do is to put in
place a system of taxation from the rich and
spend it to increase the income of the poor,” he
added.
The Senate President also said that the Senate
shall continue to pass laws on the attainment of
the MDGs and shall continue to scrutinize the
agencies’ programs on the goals. “I myself will
study the assessment and recommendations from
the Citizens’ MDG Report,” was his promise
to the audience.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte
called for reallocation of funds where it is
mostly needed to achieve the poverty alleviation
goals. “The Citizens’ MDG Report help people
realize that the budget for education and health
barely improved and do not match with population
growth and the need for catch up for the MDGs,
especially in Mindanao,” Rep. Belmonte said.
Rep. Belmonte said that the House of
Representative will help civil society groups to
move the government and the people to exert more
effort especially on financing the MDGs. “The
House will continue to put the necessary
pressure to achieve more effort on the MDGs. The
House of Representatives would like to thank the
citizens’ groups who wrote the Citizens’ MDG
Report for having monitored the country’s
progress for the last ten years,” he said.
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Envi-Health
Group demands
for fair share
of the budget
Health Care Without Harm-Southeast Asia(HCWH-SEA)
today asks members of the House of
Representatives (HOR) Committee on
Appropriations to push the Department of Health
to report on the still unreleased 2008 and 2009
envi-health budget.
According to Merci Ferrer, HCWH-SEA Executive
Director, the 2008 and 2009 General
Appropriation Act allot 100 M for purchase of
autoclaves for medical waste treatment and 13.2
M for alternatives to mercurial thermometers for
DoH-controlled hospitals. The Special Allotment
Release Order (SARO) for the two appropriations
are already available but “we have yet to see
the goods”.
Autoclaves use steam to treat and disinfect
infectious medical wastes. Upon disinfection,
the wastes are cleaner than regular household
wastes and maybe discarded along with general
wastes.
“Purchase of alternative treatment technologies
may not seem as urgent as dengue outbreak on the
outset,” said Ferrer. “But when you look
closely, all the disease outbreaks produce more
and more medical wastes that if not treated
properly will cause more harm to hospital
workers, patients and the community.”
“We need to look at the bigger picture. Take for
example the case of plastics. A few years ago,
people didn’t care how much plastics we used and
where we throw them. But now that we see islands
of plastic wastes, we start to panic and ask,
‘how do we address the problem?’” said Ferrer.
“Same is true with medical wastes. We need to
address the issue while it is still manageable.”
With regards to the budget for alternatives to
mercury thermometer, the DoH in 2008 issued
Administrative Order 2008-0021 mandating the
gradual phase-out of mercury-containing devices
in all Philippine health care facilities and
institutions by 2010.
“September 2010 marks the deadline for the
complete phase-out of mercury thermometers and
blood pressure apparatus in all our hospitals.
Our hospitals, local health units like the
community and barangay health centers need
support from the government in the phase-out and
introduction of alternatives,” said Ferrer.
Mercury, although generally thought of as the
gold standard for measuring device is harmful to
people’s health and the environment. It causes
tremors, emotional changes, insomnia,
neuromuscular changes, headaches, disturbance in
sensations, changes in nerve response and
performance deficits on cognitive functions
tests. At higher exposure, it causes damages to
lungs and kidneys, as well as to the nervous,
digestive, respiratory and immune systems.
In an on-going survey conducted by HCWH-SEA, of
the 1,851 health care facilities in the country,
556 have initiated mercury phase-out of the more
than 600 hospitals who responded.
“Unfortunately, majority of local-government
unit (LGU)-run health care facilities are so
behind in the implementation of mercury
phase-out due to financial problems. The 13.2 M
allocation for mercury alternatives will
definitely help these health care institutions,”
said Ferrer.
“Again, this issue might seem trivial compared
to disease outbreaks but keep in mind that
effects of mercury exposure are irreversible. We
do not want our health care institutions to
bring more health problems, most especially if
these are preventable.”.
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Citizens' groups offer battle plan to Pres.
Noy
Citizens groups led by Social Watch Philippines
(SWP), KAAKBAY, Liberal Party’s National
Institute for Policy Studies and Code: RED today
put forward a book that will help President
Benigno Aquino III create the battle plan to win
the war against poverty through Financing for
Development (FfD).
The book, titled Financing for Development:
Finance or Penance for the Poor, puts forward
policy recommendations on the five themes of FfD:
mobilizing domestic resources, foreign direct
investments, trade, Official Development
Assistance (ODA) and debt. In addition to the
FfD themes, the book also includes the analysis
of the remittances of overseas workers as
sources of financing for development.
“Citizens’ groups come together in a Symposium
on Financing for Development in the Philippines
to discuss the recommendations in the book and
offer the battle plan to the President to help
contribute to the development of the agenda of
the present government towards policy reforms,”
said Leonor Magtolis Briones, lead convenor of
Social Watch Philippines.
The Philippines is one of the signatories to the
International Conference of Financing for
Development or FfD, known as the Monterrey
Consensus. The consensus was mobilizing
resources for the achievement of the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs), a set of measurable
targets which heads of state promised to fulfill
by 2015 in order to eradicate poverty and
hunger, reduce inequality and promote human
rights.
“The FfD by itself does not offer explicit
proposals on improving tax policy and
administration in the Philippines. The best it
can do is to reiterate the basic principles of
domestic revenue generation and share best
national practices that cannot be replicated
easily,” said Filomeno Sta. Ana III, coordinator
of Action for Economic Reforms as he present the
book during the Symposium on Financing for
Development held in Quezon City.
“Trade these days is like going to war. If you
do not have a battle plan which should be
executed by a General, then you lose. Telling
your negotiators to simply preserve our policy
space is no battle plan at all,” said Jessica
Cantos of the Rice Watch and Action Network.
Cantos, who wrote the section on trade
liberalization, noted that after almost four
decades of holding on to an export-oriented
strategy, there were very few years that the
country experienced a positive trade balance.
“The share of the agriculture’s output to GDP
has declined; there was virtual stagnation in
the manufacturing sector in terms of employment;
and the profile of our exports is limited,”
Cantos added.
“The legislative measure worth supporting is the
creation of the Philippine Trade Representative
Office, which will be the country’s General in
trade. This will facilitate the crafting of
trade negotiating strategies – setting the
mandate from Congress, setting the parameters,
determining the bottomline,” said Cantos.
Meanwhile, Briones said that the new government
should truly implement the constitutional
mandate on a progressive tax system. “The
increase in value-added tax (VAT) rate has
served to exacerbate the government’s extreme
reliance on indirect sources of financing which
burdens the poor. VAT collections directly go to
the General Fund which covers all expenditures
under the sun – military spending, congressional
pork barrel, and subsidy to government
corporations. Historically, government spending
fro social development is much lower than the
needed financial resources,” said Briones.
Briones also called on the President to
eliminate all unnecessary tax incentives. “We
lose the war on poverty when it takes one Makati
Bureau of Internal Revenue district office one
year to collect P13 billion in taxes; while it
only takes the Board of Investments just 14 days
to grant the same amount of tax exemptions to
two very profitable companies,” she said.
“The poverty situation in the country is much
worse than when the country started on the MDGs
in 2000 and when the Philippine became a
signatory to the FfD in 2002,” Sta. Ana said.
“We call on President Aquino to thoroughly
review the FfDs leading actions in light of new
studies and findings regarding the contribution
of aid, debt, trade and policies in general to
growth. There is lack of substantial evidence to
show that they are determinants of growth,” he
added.
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www.socialwatchphilippines.org
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