Celia M. Reyes

Decentralization, Local Power and Women’s Rights

November 18-21, 2008

Mexico City

Making Services, Plans, and Budgets

Gender Responsive with CBMS:

The Philippine Experience

Outline of the Presentation

• Decentralization in the Philippines

• The GRB and CBMS: The

Convergence Points

• The CBMS-GRB methodology

• How has it been used?: Experience

from the Philippines

• Concluding Remarks

• The Philippines took a bold step of devolving

key governance functions to local

government units with the passing of the

Local Government Code of the Philippines of

1991 (RA 7160).

• Devolving authority to the local level

promised more Transparent, Participatory,

Responsive, Innovative, and Efficient delivery

of public services.

• Among the key tasks downloaded to local

government units is development planning

and budgeting .

Decentralization in the Philippines

Challenges in Local Planning and

Budgeting in the Philippines • Lack of disaggregated data on local

socioeconomic conditions

• Insufficient knowledge on priority issues / sectors

• Difficulty identifying individuals and households for targeted programs

• Very little knowledge of the socioeconomic and welfare status of the women and men in the localities

• Limited participation of other development actors (People’s Organizations and NGOs) in development planning and budgeting

Challenges in Local Planning and

Budgeting in the Philippines

• Budgeting and planning at the local

level mainly serve as compliance

documents rather than policy

documents

• Budgets and plans have minimal or

even non-recognition of the diverse

needs of women and men

• Gender and Development Budgets

tend to be unutilized or even mis-

utilized

The Results… • Shotgun approach to service delivery

planning and budgeting

• Guesswork- filled governance

• Near-sighted development programming and service delivery

• “Not too participatory” development plans

• GAD budget tends to serve as a “cookie jar”

• No means to track changing patterns, trends, budgetary efficiency

• “Gender blind” local development plans and budgets

• The CBMS-GRB project in the Philippines sought to help solve these issues and facilitate evidence based and gender responsive public service delivery.

• After a series of forums and workshops, the CBMS-GRB methodology was developed and piloted.

CBMS-GRB Initiative

The GRB and CBMS:

Convergence Points

GRB and CBMS:

Convergence Points

Point #1: Both interested in targeting & prioritization • GRB intends to analyze and formulate

budgets that truly respond to the needs of those who need it most

• CBMS as a tool enables empirically- based beneficiary targeting, needs identification, and prioritization of development initiatives

GRB and CBMS:

Convergence Points

Point #2: Both interested in

evidence-based policy making

• GRB examines government

budgetary and planning

documentations to analyze their

impacts to a diverse set of social

groupings (across gender, age,

social group, etc.)

• CBMS provides a multidimensional

view of welfare conditions at the

local level to aid policymaking

Number of

Purok children aged 0- 5

Number Percent

1 5 2 40.0

2 3 1 33.3

3 5 1 20.0

4 2 0 0.0

5 3 0 0.0

6 1 0 0.0

7 6 1 16.7

Total 25 5 20.0

Number of Malnourished Children

GRB and CBMS:

Convergence Points

Point #3: Both should be ongoing exercises

• GRB should be ideally carried out as a periodic exercise to analyze budgets as they are formulated and as these are spent.

• CBMS is done by carrying out different activities from data collection, processing, to validation and utilization. It is designed to be conduced periodically (ideally every 3 years)

The

CBMS-GRB

Methodology

A Quick Look at CBMS

• An organized way of collecting

information at the local level for use

of local government units, national

government agencies, NGOs, and

civil society for planning, program

implementation and monitoring

Key features of the CBMS

• LGU-Based while promoting

community participation

• Taps existing LGU/community-

personnel as monitors

• Has a core set of indicators but

system is flexible enough to

accommodate additional indicators

• Generates relevant information

down to the household and even at

the individual level (can provide

disaggregated data across sex, age,

civil status, etc.)

Advocacy and

Workplan

Data Collection

Data

Processing

Community

Validation

Database

Building

General Activities in

Implementing a CBMS

Analysis and

Planning

Dissemination

Program

Implementation

As a policy-making tool, GRB

needs a solid basis for it to be

firmly rooted in local level

planning and budgeting

processes.

Gender relevant programs

need a reliable information

source for performance M&E

Beneficiaries of gender-

related interventions need to

be identified and targeted to

optimize resources

CBMS as a monitoring tool is

lodged in local government

units

CBMS provides the needed

data for pragmatic M&E

activities

CBMS can generate the

needed gender-disaggregated

for targeting and resource

allocation

Why Use CBMS for GRB?

The CBMS-GRB: Its Features

• The CBMS-GRB is essentially based on the standard

CBMS methodology

• It retains some key features of the standard CBMS

(being LGU-based, multidimensional, census of

households)

• It includes enhancements that aim to collect other

key gender relevant information on different

aspects of human well-being: being educated, being

healthy, being empowered, being protected/ taken

cared of and having access to government

assistance

The CBMS-GRB Methodology

The Result:

gender responsive and

evidence-based budget

programs and

interventions

Analysis and

Planning

Dissemination

Database

Building

More enhanced

planning and

budgeting module More diversified

actors for the

community validation

exercises

Enhanced Data

processing system

Gender-sensitized

data enumerators

and supervisors

Enhanced data

collection

instruments and

Gender Sensitivity

Training

Community

Validation

Data

Processing

Advocacy and

Workplan

Data Collection

How has CBMS-GRB data been used?:

Experience from

the Philippines

How has it been used?:

Experience from the Philippines

Escalante City is a small

rural city made up of 21

barangays (villages).

Population: 86,580 (Male:

51.20%; Female: 48.80%)

No. of Households: 18,935

Income: US$ 4.85 Million

CBMS-GRB data

from Escalante City:

Some key results

On being educated (indicators on education - City of Escalante)

Indicator Results

Education

Children 6-16

years old

not attending

school, by type of

school (public or

private)

1

Percentage of children not

attending school is significantly

higher for males than females

FGDs revealed that young

males tend to work in farms to

augment household income

instead of going to school

2

Slightly greater proportion of

females attending private

schools

On being healthy… (indicators on health and nutrition – City of Escalante)

Indicator Results

Child deaths (aged

0-5 years old)

1. About 60 children aged

0-5 years old died

during the reference

year.

2. More girls died than

boys

On being healthy… (indicators on health and nutrition – City of Escalante)

Indicator Results

Women deaths due to

pregnancy related

causes

Six women died due to

pregnancy related causes

On being healthy… (indicators on health and nutrition – City of Escalante)

Indicator Results

Children aged 0-5

years old who are

malnourished

1. About 6% of children

0-5 years old are

malnourished.

2. More girls are

malnourished than

boys (377 vs. 315)

On being healthy… (indicators on water and sanitation – City of Escalante)

Indicator Results

Households without

access to safe water

supply

1. Half of the

households do not

have access to safe

water supply.

On being healthy… (indicators on water and sanitation – City of Escalante)

Indicator Results

Households without access

to sanitary toilet facility 1. Sanitation is a problem in the city as

59.4% of its households do not have

access to sanitary toilet facilities

Data validation revealed that limited

toilet access has cultural roots as

several households have been used

to not having sanitary toilets

LGU Responses

• Claim back the GAD budget as a first step to address women’s particular needs and concerns.

• No more indiscriminate use of GAD budget

• Review of development initiatives to align with the priorities

• Refocusing on job creation, health and education

• Integrate evidence from CBMS data to enhance planning and budgeting processes and set goals, targets and performance indicators

• Make the budget process participatory and empirically based

Benefits of CBMS-GRB in Escalante • THE CBMS-GRB has essentially helped address

these key development questions:

• What are the issues?

• Who should be helped?

• Where can they be found?

• What exactly do they need?

• How should the intervention be designed?

• How should this be provided?

Benefits of CBMS-GRB in Escalante

• Greater beneficiary targeting and project costing capabilities for different interventions

• Seasonal and emergency relief projects

• Employment projects (identifying possible local constituents to contact for local job fairs)

• Alternative Learning Systems (primarily for illiterate adults in the city)

• Cross checking of development project of village leaders (Barangay Captains who wish to access city level funds)

• Evidence-based GAD Plans and Budgets (deliberated upon by both male and female city department heads)

Benefits of CBMS-GRB in Escalante

• Ability to assess efficacy of previous development initiatives

• Ability of the local legislature to cross check departmental budgets for several services

• Greater involvement of other community stakeholders in development planning (via the FGDs and validation activities)

Benefits of CBMS-GRB in Escalante • The mayor can now say “NO” to political

accommodations

• Enabled better synergy administrative and service delivery city departments; local “Kingdoms” can now better work together

• The City can better prepare proposals for external funding or loan, partner with social groups, and with the provincial government of Negros Occidental

• The city can better track department performance with the socioeconomic data they obtained

• Discussions among social actors (LGU, PO’s, Business, etc) may now be conducted

The CBMS-GRB initiative was able to carry out the following tasks:

1. “Create” gender responsive budgets ( versus post budget analysis)

2. Mainstream the concerns of women into local development plans and budgets

3. Allow greater involvement of women and other marginalized sectors in the planning and budgeting processes (via the FGDs and the Validation exercises)

Concluding Remark

Maraming Salamat!

PEP-CBMS Network

Coordinating Team

Angelo King Institute for Economic

and Business Studies

Room I-1016 10th Flr. Angelo King

International Center

Estrada Cor. Arellano Ave., Malate,

Manila, Philippines

E-mail: reyesc@dls-csb.edu.ph

Web-site: www.pep-net.org

Tel: (632) 5262067

Fax: (632)5262067