Report - Social Watch Philippines

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in Congress for an adaptation fund to mandate funding modalities that, unlike other fi nancial agencies, will allow developing countries to avoid having to go through ineffi cient, bureaucratic and conditionalityheavy multilateral fi nancing from institutions such as the World Bank. It is aimed to raise adaptive capacities of vulnerable communities. 11 Aid Aid for social development is a non-issue. In fact, it should immediately lead to MDG fi nancing. However, even government reports admit that the infrastructure sector consistently received the highest amount of loans while Governance, Institutions, Public Safety and Disaster Management sectors had the least amounts from 1990 to 2007 (see Figure 1). Issues regarding Offi cial Development Assistance Tied aid and aid for trade This has been an age-old issue which has yet to see any real solution. We have seen this in almost every Figure 1. ODA loans per sector, 1990-2009 (NEDA Report) 140 SOCIAL WATCH PHILIPPINES JICA, ADB, WB and IMF loan. The issues range from simple identifi cation of consultants and sources of raw materials to outright sector reform programs, such as that of power and water. With the problems that accompanied the slow down in the liberalization program of developing countries after their accession in the GATT-WTO, there came another permutation of tied aid: that of ‘aid-fortrade’. The menu of trade-related activities that can be fi nanced through aid is actually benefi cial to developing countries – workers’ skills enhancement, modernizing customs systems, ports and agriculture infrastructure and export diversifi cation among others. In fact, these may even be viewed as MDG-enhancing projects. As such, these are welcomed by least developed countries, especially those in Africa. Yet, for the Philippines, some of the projects that seemingly get fi nancing through aid for trade are more along the lines of trade facilitation – ensuring that customs rules adhere to WTO rules to the letter, and hence a WTO-aligned customs modernization bill is 11 “Climate Finance Chaos: A Finance Agenda for Urgent Climate Action in the Philippines” Climate Action Policy Brief Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities (ICSC), July 2010. The full report can be downloaded from http://ejeepney.org and http://oxfamphilippines.wordpress.com
eing proposed in Congress. But more worrisome is the conditionality that somehow coerces countries to liberalize outside the formal WTO negotiations in order to get their much-needed fi nancing. 12 The China invasion Professor Eduardo Tadem of the UP Asian Center commented, “China’s emergence as a new player in foreign development assistance introduces a new dimension to the global context of ODA.” While most of us are familiar with botched National Broadband Network-Zhong Xing Telecommunication Equipment Company Ltd., (NBN-ZTE) deal which involved borrowing from China and benefi ting a Chinese company (ZTE) in a government telecommunications project, there are other deals made by the Department of Agriculture entitled the RP-China Memorandum of Understanding that involved setting aside 1.24 million hectares of land for the agricultural use of Chinese companies for bio-ethanol, sorghum, corn, rice, and cassava, among others. This was supposed to translate into some Php 10 billion worth of investments from China. At the same time, China committed to provide US$ 2 billion worth of ODA projects yearly from 2007 to 2009. 13 While this might be viewed as fi lling the gap left by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the US in terms of ODA-fi nancing, the terms and conditions laid down by China, coupled with the many questionable deals done during the previous Arroyo administration calls for greater vigilance among civil society organizations and transparency mechanisms within the government’s ODA acquisition processes. Cost overruns As of December 2008, NEDA reported that cost overruns for 29 ODA-funded projects totaled Php 43.32 billion. Reasons identifi ed for the over budget spending are civil works costs escalation, foreign currency fl uctuations, and land acquisition among others. 14 Again, caution must be taken to ensure that such cost escalations are really justifi able and not just whimsically-done adjustments. Conclusions and Recommendations Genuine global partnership in the context of achieving the MDGs is yet to happen. Global and regional proposals that are practical and doable are plentiful and come from various stakeholders. As we move towards 2015, it would be a pity if all these initiatives simply end up as sound and fury. Perhaps beyond partnerships, we also need global political will. Further recommendations are detailed below. An MDG-sensitive trade policy Clearly, there is a need to go beyond the view that trade is simply about greater openness and building and marketing competitive products. Trade should create meaningful jobs, not destroy them, and it should promote industrialization and food security, not relegate the country to perpetual dependence on imports. It should pave the way for an integration of our agriculture, industrial and service sectors, not economic disintegration. Above all, it should pave the way towards sustainable development that addresses poverty. Specifi c measures to achieve this are listed below: A national industrialization plan. Civil society organizations, for so many years now, have been calling on the government to put together a national agro-industrialization plan that will guide the country’s trade and investments policies, but to no avail. As of now, what we have are enclaves of economic zones each offering better investment terms, dutyfree importation of raw materials, strike-free and union-free industrial areas, completely detached from the rest of the economy, and, worse, distorting whatever rationality remains of our tariff structure. A stop to the creation of new ecozones and free ports. Until we have crafted a national industrialization plan through a broad consultative process the government must put a stop to the creation of new eco-zones and freeports. Creation of a Trade Representative Offi ce. There are more than 40 trade and investment 12 “Scaling up aid for trade: How to support poor countries to trade their way out of poverty,” Oxfam Briefi ng Note. 15 November 2005. 13 “Development down the drain: The Crisis of Offi cial Development Assistance to the Philippines,” by Eduardo C. Tadem, Financing for Development: Finance or Penance for the Poor, Mobilizing Resources for the MDGs: The Five-Year Review of Financing for Development, Social Watch Philippines, 2008. 14 “ODA cost overruns hit P14B” by Cai U. Ordinario, Business Mirror, 2 July 2009, http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/home/topnews/12607-oda-cost-overruns-hit-p14b.html. Winning the Numbers, Losing the War: The Other MDG Report 2010 141
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Winning the Numbers, Losing the War
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Many deserve our th
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CLEEP Comprehensive Livelihood and
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MOA-AD Memorandum of Agreement on A
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS/CONTRIBUTORS Leon
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FOREWORD By ISAGANI R. SERRANO This
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An urgent MDG message: Inadequate f
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The use of the budget instrument fo
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MDG chances: stability and vulnerab
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may mean a short honeymoon period.
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what we got from Annex I countries
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(Php58.6 Billion) of GDP at current
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Fourth Assessment Report provide a
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Losing the war on poverty The Other
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Table 1. Philippines’ MDG progres
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(NER) and medium on both cohort sur
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incidence of 97.46 percent. The las
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special needs; (c) 228,928 women in
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cultural structures urgently needin
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capacity to confront the dreaded cl
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MDG Goal 1 Targets 1 and 3: On erad
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Table 1. Prevalence of undernutriti
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2007, women’s national unemployme
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in the service and production secto
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een generally positive—increased
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Table 9: Partial Listing of Big Lan
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and promote gender equality in all
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While many see this as an education
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seen in both public and private pre
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and therefore, limited coverage. Th
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Table 7. Education Expenditure as a
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Box 2. Education budget tracking (2
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This paper looks at highly vulnerab
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to education. 5 In practice, debt p
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Table 5. Distribution of Government
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Table 7. Average Daily Basic Pay by
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in the 80’s, according to Sibal,
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eports of female OFW deaths, sexual
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Table 13. Trafficked Migrants Assis
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plicating overpopulation and poor w
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CAN$318.8 billion. While they found
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. Women’s economic empowerment i.
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statistics-fs-violence-against-fi l
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New policies and programs meant to
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Table 2: Immunization Status 1998 2
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Table 4. List of Nutritionally Vuln
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percent), who gave birth at home (9
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protocol is another comprehensive s
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5. Revamping the health insurance s
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Universalizing health care As we po
Page 106 and 107: Progress of work in improving mater
Page 108 and 109: Figure 2. Use of Skilled Birth Atte
Page 110 and 111: In terms of postnatal care, 77 perc
Page 112 and 113: Abortion Worldwide abortion rates h
Page 114 and 115: went down from 9.8 percent in 2005
Page 116 and 117: longer to health care centers in co
Page 118 and 119: However, USAID, with the concurrenc
Page 120 and 121: Box 1. Safe Motherhood: a brief his
Page 123 and 124: The rising challenge of HIV/AIDS an
Page 125 and 126: Sexual transmission remains to be t
Page 127 and 128: national response. Since health was
Page 129 and 130: Figure 7. Frequency distribution of
Page 131 and 132: Table 5. Annual estimated cost for
Page 133 and 134: tion of Public-Private Mix Departme
Page 135 and 136: Not much time, but not without opti
Page 137 and 138: Questions and more questions on the
Page 139 and 140: Figure 1: Biodiversity Hotspots Bio
Page 141 and 142: MDG’s, but more importantly, on b
Page 143 and 144: 8. Organic Agriculture Act of 2010;
Page 145 and 146: science Bureau (MGB) but funded by
Page 147 and 148: Problems and gaps Incoherent and cl
Page 149 and 150: must be able to provide for non-pro
Page 151 and 152: Trade, debt and aid: MDG retardants
Page 153 and 154: Table 1. Recent Trade and Investmen
Page 155: elated social spending; Three, ille
Page 159: Results - Developing countries and
Page 162 and 163: Mindanao situation Mindanao is the
Page 164 and 165: Table 1.Cohort Survival Rate by Reg
Page 166 and 167: MTPDP has not gained momentum to ef
Page 168 and 169: Seven provinces in Mindanao, almost
Page 170 and 171: a. Lobby for the crafting of laws a
Page 172 and 173: Moro situation after the Treaty of
Page 174 and 175: and Palawan movement and Mindanao I
Page 176 and 177: Appendix B Are the Moros Filipinos?
Page 178 and 179: Government with respect to the Moro
Page 180 and 181: legal and political shields behind
Page 182 and 183: Goals and Targets (from the Millenn
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