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Title: The gender-responsive budgeting policy of the Philippines
Author: UNIFEM
Date: 2003-2005
This report details the work of the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW) ; the oversight agency in charge of coordinating the implementation of the policy, including its monitoring and evaluation. It reveiws the six-year implementation of the Gender and Development (GAD) budget policy. It also outlines the progress made to date of the NCRFW in evaluating the role of the five percent GAD budget within the context of gender analysis of the total budget at the national level.
GRB WORK IN PHILIPPINES
Implementing partners
National Commission on the Role of Filippino Women (NCRFW), Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), National Economic Development Authority (NEDA), and Department of Agriculture (DA), Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP)
Starting date: April 2002
End Date of Report: February 2005
Background
The gender-responsive budgeting policy of the Philippines is commonly referred to as the "gender and development (GAD) budgeting policy, or the five percent GAD budget policy. It is prescribed in a section of the annual General Appropriations Act (GAA), which has the force of a law. It requires government agencies (including local government units) to utilize at least five percent of their respective total budgets for programmes, activities and projects that address the needs and uphold rights of women. The National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women (NCRFW) is the oversight agency in charge of coordinating the implementation of the policy, including its monitoring and evaluation.
Justification
Gender-responsive budgeting in the Philippines has been viewed as a separate process from mainstream budgeting. Initially focused on the implementation of the National GAD Plan of Action, it has not been contextualized within the budgeting mainstream. The GAD budget has also not been widely utilized by women’s groups as a lobbying tool to influence the main government budget. Much of the work by the NCRFW and women’s lobby groups has focused on protecting the GAD budget mechanism in the annual General Appropriations Act, and monitoring the level of expenditure committed under the GAD budget by government departments and agencies. Monitoring has focused on the percentage of the total budget declared under the GAD budget, rather than on the results of such expenditures. Paradoxically, the existence of a strong gender budgeting mechanism in the Philippines, in the form of the GAD five per cent mechanism, resulted in a narrow focus on the mechanism itself rather than on its objectives. It proved quite difficult for NCRFW and the research team to move beyond the monitoring role of the Commission in assessing the extent to which government agencies were complying with the GAD requirement that five per cent of the total budget be allocated for the advancement of women.
In this context, UNIFEM supported a preparatory assistance (PA) for strengthening gender budgeting in the Philippines. The aim was to review the six-year implementation of the Gender and Development (GAD) budget policy, and consider the role of the five per cent GAD budget within the context of gender analysis of the total budget. Based on this, a proposal to strengthen and, where appropriate, extend the approach to gender budgeting in the Philippines would be developed.
What has been realized:
In 2003, the preparatory assistance phase was concluded with the finalization of the report entitled “Gender and Development budgeting in the Philippines: Issues, Challenges and Imperatives". The report analyzed the impact of the Philippines 5% Gender and Development budget policy and proposed gender responsive budgeting as a way to improve the mainstream budgeting system by enhancing government capability to achieve results, ensuring an engendered development process and opening the system to greater and more meaningful participation by civil society. An important consideration following the report was the shift to a performance or results-based approach to gender budgeting as opposed to the 5 % GAD budget. This implied analyzing the budgets in terms of the outcomes for women and how these outcomes relate to the budgets allocated to corresponding programmes and services. Correspondingly, there has been a greater involvement of the local Government and of the civil society in the budgeting process after this intervention.
Preliminary orientation and advocacy were undertaken by NCRFW to secure the participation of the oversight agencies, pilot agencies and partner women’s NGOs. A series of exploratory meetings were conducted to discuss the project with prospective project partners and the Terms of Reference for project activities were drawn up in consultation with those partners. A Project Advisory Committee (PAC) has been created composed of representatives from partner agencies and NGOs to provide policy directions, review workplans, budgets and overall progress and coordination among partner agencies.
An Inception Workshop was organized in May 2004 to bring clarity and coherence among stakeholders and to validate the separate components. The workshop was successful in facilitating understanding among key stakeholders of the paradigm shift from the current 5% GAD budget, which concentrates on monitoring expenditure, towards mainstreaming the GAD budget within the national budgeting processes as a tool for results-based performance budgeting; establishing implementation mechanism for the project, identifying the commitment and roles of various stakeholders and finalizing the Workplan for the project implementation. Participants included more than 50 representatives from the Commission on Audit (COA), Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), Department of Health (DOH), Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), National Economic Development Authority (NEDA), and Department of Agriculture (DA), UP Center for Women’s Studies, Congressional Oversight Committee, Department of Finance and civil society organizations.
The workshop included presentations by key experts and policy makers and resulted in the formulation of a detailed set of activities and agreed on the roles that each partner agency would perform in accordance to the work plan and expected outputs to implement the Macro Research, the Gender Budgeting Research and the Pilot-testing: Action component of the project. Main outputs of this workshop was the launch of the initiative and the identified priority components being:
(a) Macro-Policy Research Component
(b) Gender Budget Research
(c) Capacity building on gender responsive budgeting
(d) Gender Budget Action- Piloting
(a) Macro-Policy Research Component
The Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) has established networks with key persons in relevant agencies and formed a Task Force comprising members of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), Department of Health (DOH), Department of Education (DOEd), Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and NCRFW. A preliminary scan of available data on each of the focus sectors of the study – health, agriculture, education and social welfare was conducted and the research methodology and framework for the analysis was finalized August 2004.
PIDS is in the data-gathering phase, and has been regularly coordinating with focal agencies to come up with its various data needs. The analysis examines National government expenditures disaggregated into gender-relevant categories as: gender equality targeted expenditure, women’s priority public services, women’s priority income transfers, gender management system in government, gender balance in public sector employment and gender balance in business support.
(b) Gender Budget Analysis
A technical working group (TWG) has been convened with representatives from DBM, National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Finance (DOF), Department of Health (DOH), and the Commission on Audit (COA), civil society (WomanHealth, SocialWatch and Women in Politics Institute) and the academia (UP College of Social Work and Community Development and UP NCPAG). A framework for integrating GAD in the budgeting system was developed by Professor Leonar Magtolis-Briones adopting Sharkansky’s model of the administrative system and applying it to the Philippine Budgeting System. This was followed with a series of capacity building activities for the project partners to develop conceptual clarity sessions have been conducted to provide TWG members with a working knowledge of key concepts. Sessions have also been conducted with NEDA, DBM and the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) to discuss entry points to the planning and budgeting processes.
While there are procedural guidelines on GAD planning and budgeting, there are no existing guidelines in ensuring budget accountability. The gender budgets initiative seeks to influence the entire budgeting process and will be developing guidelines. The technical paper on integrating GAD in Government planning and budgeting processes which includes specific strategies to implement the recommended entry points is currently being drafted in collaboration between DBM and NCRFW.
(c) Pilot Gender Budget Initiative
The Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) is implementing this component in partnership with the NCRFW and in consultation with a technical working group (TWG). The TWG is composed of representatives from pilot agencies DA and National Dairy Authority and DOH and the Quirino Memorial Medical Center; oversight agencies NEDA and DBM; NAPC; and civil society organizations. DA and DOH representatives are part of the TWG as they are pilot agencies of the project. The other TWG members provide inputs to the implementation of the project, especially in their key functional areas- agriculture or health.
An initial report on the initiative has been prepared by the DAP which reviews models on gender budget analysis and proposes their application in the context of the DA and OH. The TWG agreed on the follow up steps in its meeting in Setpember 2004 teams were established - the agriculture and health teams- to implement piloting activities in specific programs of the DA and DOH. At the DOH, the focus will be on the National Tuberculosis Control Program for carrying out the gender budget analysis. The DA is consulting with its partners regarding examining the Rice Program. Both programs have been identified as they relate to the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing poverty and hunger.
Success Indicators:
- Participation of a large number of individuals, institutioins, NGOs, women's machinery and Government agencies in the process of project implementation and engagement in gender responsive budget initiatives in the Philippines
- Expanded partnerships brokered by UNIFEM and NGOs resulting in increase in civil society/government partnership
- Increased understanding of the results of the Philippines GAD Budget
Successful Strategies:
Engaging civil society organizations
It has been observed that the civil society organizations provided pressure for integrating gender in the government planning and budgeting systems and stressed the importance of engendering government processes. They have also been instrumental in providing important recommendations that can serve as institutional mechanisms to sustain the results of the project. For instance, the suggestions for formulating a “shadow framework”, instituting an oversight body, and applying the project at the local level were inputs shared by civil society partners. Civil society organizations have voiced support to sustain the results of the project by monitoring the government agencies’ application of the recommendations. The enthusiasm of the partners outside of the government serves also to challenge the group to match their fervor. This strategy also builds the capacity of civil society organizations by enriching their knowledge and appreciation about government planning and budgeting processes at the national level.
Capacity-building as a built-in component
The involvement of partners in project implementation activities provides the opportunity to critique and enhance existing planning and budgeting processes. This helps build capacity of project stakeholders in adapting to and even influencing the shift from line budgeting to performance-budgeting.
Getting external technical expertise
Engaging with an expert in the field of national planning and budgeting and a gender expert and advocate, convinced the group that gender-responsive performance-based budgeting is not only possible but more so an effective shift from the current perspective of the GAD Budget Policy.
Sustainability Strategy:
The project draws on a vast network of key stakeholders to help achieve project outputs, identifying pros and cons in the steps of various components. The participatory and consultative strategies employed have provided inputs to enriching both the content and the processes of the project. The participatory approach has ensured the appreciation of project processes and ownership of project outputs by the partners, involving key stakeholders besides ensuring the acceptability of proposed steps and processes aimed at enhancing planning and budgeting processes prior to its actual integration/piloting phase. Given the appropriate context and environment, this will facilitate the institutionalization and sustainability of the project outputs and outcomes.
Last Updated: March 2005
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Gender-responsive budgeting is a crucial tool for women’s empowerment. In Morocco, UNIFEM has worked with the government to create a more tailored approach in which budgeting can have a more effective and immediate impact. As this documentary illustrates, when the needs of women living in a particular geographical and cultural context are addressed, the entire community benefits. In the past four years, the Finance Ministry of Morocco has made substantial progress in developing both gender-responsive and results-oriented budgetary reform.
