New Hope for the 2013 Budget Process

Involving citizens for good governance became a “national call” of the new government.

The Aquino administration took a few more steps to open many “windows of engagement” for promoting good governance and transparency through the expansion of CSO involvement in the budgeting  process of the national government agencies.  A new framework was designed and instituted to provide effective mechanisms that can help ensure the genuine involvement of citizens. Under Joint Memorandum Circular No. 1, s. 2012, the Human Development  Poverty Reduction (HDPR) Cluster and the Good Governance and Anti-Poverty Cluster together with the Department of Budget Management and the Department of Interior Local Government have joined forces to pioneer the open governance initiative for the localization of poverty reduction through a “bottom-up” approach to government planning and budgeting .

The “bottom-up” budgeting approach will be applied for the preparation of the 2013 national budget, to help ensure  that the development needs of the identified 609 focus municipalities/cities are addressed and to harmonize the budget with the delivery of services of the national agencies through more inclusive and participatory governance process.

This approach also recognizes the vital role of the CSOs  in making  poverty reduction initiatives  more effective and in strengthening  participatory and decentralized budgeting. Indeed, the CSOs’ involvement is a relatively unique feature of this planning and budget process. It gives way to continuous efforts of the government to expand the meaningful collaboration between the participating national government agencies (NGAs), local government units (LGUs) and CSOs in crafting the 2013 budget.

From February to   March 2012, a series of orientation and consultation sessions was conducted as part of the preparation phase for the bottom-up budgeting (BUB) and local anti-poverty plan (LAPP) process. CODE-NGO and other partner organizations actively engaged in the said process.
 
Download schedule of consultations conducted

The identified LGUs, in coordination with the CSOs, then undertook the process of formulating their local anti-poverty plan and identifying their priority anti-poverty programs/projects that they would like to be incorporated in the 2013 budget of the concerned national government agencies. These plans/programs/projects were to have been duly endorsed by the identified CSOs and approved by the Sanggunian before submission to the national government agencies last April 10, 2012, and these agencies had to submit their proposed budgets to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) last April 30. Through this effort, we can be led to a more people-oriented budget that addresses the poverty situation in the priority cities and municipalities. -by Mhafe del Mundo, Youth Coordinator, C4CC, CODE-NGO.