Full Report - Subregional Office for East and North-East Asia - escap

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ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SURVEY OF ASIA AND THE PACIFIC 2013 Box 2.1. Resource allocation for social equality and inclusiveness: the experience with gender-responsive budgeting Despite impressive GDP growth at the aggregate level, in East and North-East Asia the functional, spatial and gender distribution of income and wealth has become more unequal over time (OECD, 2011). In particular, gender inequality remains stubbornly high, as reflected in some indices. For example, the percentage of seats held by women in single or lower chambers of national parliaments in 2012 was 21.3% in China, 14.7% in the Republic of Korea and 10.8% in Japan. a In fact in Japan the percentage fell even lower, to 7.9%, after the lower house election on 16 December 2012. These three countries also rank low in the annual World Economic Forum gender gap index, which is based on 14 indicators related to economic participation, educational attainment, health and political empowerment (they ranked 69th, 101st and 108th, respectively, among the 135 countries surveyed) (Hausmann, Tyson and Zahidi, 2012). b In addition, the Republic of Korea has the widest gender wage gap among OECD countries at 39%, followed by Japan (OECD, 2012a; and 2012b). Gender-responsive budgeting (also called “gender-sensitive budgeting” or simply “gender budgeting”) is one of the available policy tools to address gender inequality. Awareness rose during the 1980s that government budgets, instead of being gender-neutral, are in fact often gender-blind. The Beijing Platform of Action, c adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, called for integration of a gender perspective into budgetary decisions on policies and programmes. Subsequently, the outcome document adopted at the Beijing+5 d meeting called on all Governments to “[i]ncorporate a gender perspective into the design, development, adoption and execution of all budgetary processes, as appropriate, in order to promote equitable, effective and appropriate resource allocation and establish adequate budgetary allocations to support gender equality and development programmes that enhance women’s empowerment and develop the necessary analytical and methodological tools and mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation” e . Gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) is a form of gender-impact assessment that enables examination of the budgeting cycle at each step (conception, planning, approval, execution, monitoring, analysis and auditing) from a gender perspective, to ensure that resource allocation and utilization reduce existing gender inequalities and do not create new ones. GRB can be conducted at different levels of Government and include civil society groups, thereby enhancing citizens’ participation and inclusiveness in governance. More than 70 countries around the world have engaged in gender budget initiatives in one form or another (UNIFEM, 2008). About half of OECD countries “always” or in “some cases” require GRB at all levels of Government. Within East and North-East Asia, the Republic of Korea has enacted a solid legal basis for GRB. Its National Finance Act of 2006 requires implementation of gender budgeting from 2010 onwards. Article 16 of the act stipulates that the Government “should evaluate the impact of public expenditure on women and men and try to reflect the results in the national budgetary allocation”. Other articles require each office to implement gender budgeting at both the planning and monitoring stages and to submit a gender balance sheet of their budget (Elson and others, 2009). e Thanks to the act, GRB in the Republic of Korea is considered one of the most comprehensive and progressive national schemes in the world. Various obstacles remain, however: lack of understanding on gender issues among officials, lack of gender-segregated data to analyse the current situation or to evaluate policy impact and the fact that the submitted gender budget sheet is not discussed in the National Assembly (Ma, 2008). Japan has only recently (from 2010) started to do so, by including the need to incorporate gender perspectives into all stages of the budgeting process in the Third Basic Plan for Gender Equality (Ichii and others, 2009). UNDP and UN-Women have assisted China and Mongolia in gender budget training for governmental officials. Governments can benefit from GRB if they wish to ensure accountability to the public for policy commitments. By applying the same principles, the budget can be monitored to evaluate policy impacts on other vulnerable groups, such as the disabled, elderly, survivors of disasters and ethnic minorities. a This is the percentage of seats held by women in single or lower chambers of national parliaments, as indicated in The Updated Handbook on Indicators for Monitoring the Millennium Development Goals, http://mdgs.un.org (accessed on 20 December 2012). b The Russian Federation ranked 59th and Mongolia 44th. c See Report of the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing,4–15 September 1995 (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.96. IV.13), chap. I, resolution 1, annexes I and II. d See General Assembly resolutions S 23/2, annex, and S 23/3, annex, as they relate to the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly, entitled “Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century”. e See General Assembly resolution S-23/3, annex, para. 73(b). 80
MACROECONOMIC PERFORMANCE AND POLICY CHALLENGES AT THE SUBREGIONAL LEVEL CHAPTER 2 The Government of China unveiled comprehensive guidelines in February 2013 to improve income distribution in the country. 1 The average real income of urban and rural residents will be doubled in 2020 from the 2010 level. The middle-income group will be expanded and the number of those living below the poverty line will be sharply reduced by 80 million by 2015. In China, poverty is mainly a rural problem and 128 million people were estimated to constitute the rural poor in 2011. The Government will enhance spending on social security and employment, and economic growth will be more consumption driven. The guidelines also offer directions on an extensive range of policy areas, such as taxation, subsidies, salary system, financial regulation, farmers’ incomes, household registration and social security. The local governments and various departments have been urged to map out supporting schemes and detailed rules for implementation of the guidelines. Effective implementation of the guidelines will help in reducing growing income inequality and accelerate the process of poverty reduction in the country. Boosting potential growth and improving income inequality appear as common medium-term policy priorities Boosting potential growth and improving income inequality appear as common medium-term policy priorities across East and North-East Asia. Boosting productive capacity requires additional efforts to increase the labour force participation rate, especially for women, which is about 50% in Japan, Mongolia and the Republic of Korea and much lower than male rates of more than 65%, and to further prepare the population for the challenges of the knowledge economy. Measures to align service sector productivity with the levels prevailing in manufacturing and in developed countries would also ease the shift in sources of growth to domestic demand. Prompt action on these fronts, also drawing on best practices in Asia and the rest of the world, should pave the way for more inclusive growth. Ageing is an additional challenge, as the subregion experiences the fastest demographic transition in the world, with the proportion of persons 65 years or older projected to rise from 1 in 10 in 2010 to 1 in 3 in 2050. Care of the elderly, including care for physical and psychological health, and social and income support, will have implications for fiscal sustainability and economic growth, but it is imperative for policymakers to recognize that older citizens can contribute to the economy and societies at large in their multiple roles as producers, consumers, transmitters of traditions, tenders of children in families, moral authorities in communities and so on. The environment is the third dimension of sustainable development, and the subregion faces great challenges in this regard. In order to tackle them, individual countries have initiated various policies, in particular to reduce air pollution and its adverse impacts on human health and the environment. The Fourth Basic Environmental Plan of Japan 2 includes both regulatory measures on pollutants and economic tools to protect the atmospheric environment. In the Republic of Korea, the Total Air Pollution Load Management System, an advanced environmental management system which rations annual total allowable emissions, has been implemented. The Government of China has made significant progress and has put forward its ambitious twelfth five-year plan to reduce by 2015 the level of sulphur dioxide in the air by 8% compared with that of 2010, despite the projected rapid increase in the number of power plants and vehicles. Mongolia also tightened the national standard for air pollution emissions from coal-fired power plants in 2011; however, outdated technologies and power plants, as well as increasing major emissions from informal settlements (gers) and mobile air pollution sources (old cars), still pose significant challenges. Policy coherence is a major problem to be addressed. A poignant example is the decision to make raw coal more affordable by reducing its price, while restricting its use in order to improve air quality. 81
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UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 03.30 GMT, THUR
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ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SURVEY OF ASIA
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PREFACE The Economic and Social Sur
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY FORWARD-LOOKING M
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on education and health. Indebted c
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This report was pr
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CONTENTS Page Foreword ............
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CONTENTS (continued) Page Australia
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BOXES Page A. Forward-looking macro
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FIGURES (continued) Page 1.20. Ineq
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TABLES Page 1.1. Main destination e
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References to dollars ($) are to Un
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ABBREVIATIONS ADB AEC APEC ASEAN AS
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SOURCES OF QUOTATIONS (a) Page 1: a
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WHY FORWARD-LOOKING MACROECONOMIC P
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▲ WHY FORWARD-LOOKING MACROECONOM
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THE STATE OF INCLUSIVE AND SUSTAINA
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DEVELOPMENTAL MACROECONOMICS: THE C
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Turkey Hong Kong, China Tajikistan
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INVESTING IN INCLUSIVE AND SUSTAINA
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Percentage of GDP INVESTING IN INCL
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❚ ❚ ✕❚ INVESTING IN INCLUSI
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207 REFERENCES
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REFERENCES REFERENCES Abdyrasulova
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REFERENCES (2012a). The debate on e
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REFERENCES (2012). World Energy Out
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REFERENCES Ma, K-H (2008). Assessme
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REFERENCES (2011b). Child Poverty i
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REFERENCES United Nations, Economic
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STATISTICAL ANNEX STATISTICAL ANNEX
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STATISTICAL ANNEX Table 2. Poverty
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STATISTICAL ANNEX Table 4. Resource
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STATISTICAL ANNEX Technical notes T
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STATISTICAL ANNEX Source: Barro, Ro
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STATISTICAL ANNEX estimates based o
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This publication may be obtained fr
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READERSHIP SURVEY The Macroeconomic
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Half a decade since the onset of th
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