From the Department of Budget and Management

The Administration is strengthening its commitment for a national budget that is more
transparent, accountable, and responsive to the needs of the Filipino people by further
institutionalizing the implementation of Bottom-up Budgeting (BuB) in FY 2016.

In the FY 2016 Budget Call of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), the
implementation of BuB will be scaled up via greater involvement and responsibility of
local government units (LGUS) in anti-poverty and basic public projects in their
localities. Meanwhile, national agencies will focus on accelerating the overall
execution of programs and projects that will reduce poverty and promote economic
growth in more regions in the country.

Secretary of Budget Florencio “Butch” Abad said, “Ultimately, the objective of BuB is
to develop the overall capacity of LGUs. Aside from delivering basic social services,
they will also become income-generating hubs for growth that develop industries to
provide jobs and livelihood for their people.”

DBM BuB Focal Person Patrick Lim said, “We want to realize a legacy of transforming
a culture of patronage into a culture of empowerment, where people have a stake in
the budget process. LGUs and communities have a better grasp of local needs and
BuB provides them an opportunity to propose projects that are oriented towards filling
these gaps at the community level.”

The program has shown concrete results in communities’ relationship with their LGUs,
especially in the poorer and less privileged municipalities of the country. One of the
projects that illustrates this is the coco coir twining project in Asuncion, Davao del
Norte.

Through the BuB, this project was able to develop the industry so as to contribute to
the livelihood and employment of the people in the area. With an approved budget of
P621, 500 coursed through the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the LGU was
able to consult with stakeholders, conduct trainings, and carry out monitoring and
evaluation activities for the whole project.

Through the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), the municipality
of Asuncion has also implemented a water supply project that transformed the lives of
its people by improving the health and sanitation of communities. Before the project,
people were forced to fetch water from far and secluded areas. Now, water is
accessible in their community.

DILG Mar Roxas said, “BuB is the concrete evidence of ‘Kayo ang boss ko.’ It is the
people who tell the National Government what they need and when they need it. Our
role is to empower them and encourage their active participation in this form of good
governance.”

Anchored on the principle that LGUs and communities should take a more
participatory role in the budget process, BuB has expanded this year to include 14,300
poverty-reduction projects to cover for different social services in 1,590 cities and
municipalities nationwide in the 2015 National Budget.
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January 7, 2016

In 2017, the government’s reform program, Bottom-Up Budgeting will be expanded to cover
42,036 barangays nationwide. Each barangay will receive a subsidy of P1 million to be used
for the implementation of projects that they have identified. The program is expected to aid
barangays in better formulating poverty reduction action plans and monitoring the delivery of
basic services in the communities.

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) announced that Bottom-Up Budgeting
(BuB), the government’s reform program that institutionalized the people’s participation in the
budget process, will be expanded next year to cover 42,036 barangays nationwide.

DBM Secretary Florencio B. Abad said that while all barangays are beneficiaries of the
program, implementation shall be in batches.

“The first 12,000 barangays will receive funding from the national government in 2017,” Abad
said.

Abad added that the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) has started
national consultations with barangay captains to engage them in the discussion of the rationale,
objectives, and mechanics of the Barangay BuB. This will be followed by capacity building
sessions and project preparation for the first batch of barangays that will pioneer BuB.

According to DILG Sec. Mel Senen S. Sarmiento, the expansion of the BuB was the result of
the clamor of various associations of barangay councils (ABCs), civil society organizations
(CSOs), and the Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP). The ULAP National
Executive Board—on behalf of its member leagues, local government units, and elected
officials—passed a resolution to institutionalize BuB at the barangay level and adopted the
recommendation from the leagues for the implementing guidelines of the BuB.

“We are bringing BuB down to the grassroots level to ensure that the need for services and
facilities of barangays are met. Also, by enabling barangays to implement projects which they
have identified and prioritized through a process of citizen participation in planning and
budgeting, we hope to improve governance at the barangay level,” Sarmiento said.

The Liga ng mga Barangay ng Pilipinas (LBP)—through its National President, Atty. Edmund
R. Abesamis—expressed support for the program, calling the Barangay BuB “the highlight of
the national government’s recognition of the role of barangays in governance.”

“The Barangay Bottom-Up Budgeting effectively provides life and meaning to the recognition
of barangays as frontliners in governance,” Abesamis said.

How to participate in Barangay BuB

To participate in the program, each barangay league’s city and municipal president must orient
all punong barangays within their area of jurisdiction on the Barangay BuB not later
than January 31, 2016.
Afterwards, every punong barangay must convene a Barangay Development Council (BDC)
for orientation, conduct a planning workshop with the BDC, and formulate a list of priority
projects for submission to the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP), which will
develop a criteria for the ranking and selection of barangays.

The Ugnayan ng Barangay at Simbahan (UBAS)—a partnership of local Catholic churches,

the LBP, and the DILG for the observance of good governance principles at the community
level—will monitor the proper implementation of the projects.

At least 1,590 local government units have participated in the BuB program since it was
implemented in 2013. There was a total of 42,221 BuB projects reported in the Open BuB
Portal. Of this number, 13,712 projects have been completed as of December 1, 2015 (exclusive
of dropped projects that were replaced, split, or merged).

For this year, 14,325 local poverty reduction projects have been allocated P24.7 billion. This
is an increase from P8 billion in 2013 for projects identified in 595 cities and municipalities.

Bottom-up Budgeting project internationally recognized

BuB has been recognized as one of five Best Practices in Fiscal Transparency from around the
world during the Open Government Partnership (OGP) Summit held in Mexico City last
November. In their declaration, Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) noted that “in
2015, 1,514 cities and municipalities (92 percent of all in the country) had joined the program
and it has so much demand it would be difficult for future governments to discontinue.”

The Philippines was also granted the Gold Open Government Award for BuB in the inaugural
OGP Awards at the United Nations Head Quarters in New York City in September 2014. The
country was recognized for its outstanding efforts to deepen citizen engagement in the budget
process, one of the three gold awards given out to recognize innovative and citizen-driven
initiatives in designing and implementing public policy.

BuB is also being credited as one of the reforms that have helped to improve the country’s
standing in global benchmarks of budget transparency. For example, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) declared the Philippines exhibits good and advanced practices in several
areas of its new Fiscal Transparency Code. Likewise, the International Budget Partnership’s
Open Budget Survey (OBS) for 2015 ranked the Philippines as number one in Budget
Transparency in the ASEAN because of programs such as the BuB.

Bottom-Up-Budgeting:
Experience at the
grassroots?
Making the BUB process more effective in responding to the needs of the
basic sectors demands thorough assessment

Since September 2012, Buttom-Up Budgeting or BUB has been a buzzword

among civil society organizations (CSOs) all over the country, as the budget
for 2014 was being discussed by people's organizations at the municipal level.

By end of 2012, majority of civil society organizations CSOs had attended a

series of fora and discussions on BUB. This allowed us to obtain BUB's
conceptual input, legal mandate, and procedures.

The knowledge that they have acquired provided many these CSOs new
realizations for engagement. Each of them designed planning and budgeting
strategy for BUB engagement.

In a project evaluation that I attended with the members of the Bgy Barosbos
Mananagat Association (BBMA), a group of fisherfolk engaged in marine
protection from Bgy Barosbos in Carles town in Northern Iloilo, BUB emerged,
unsolicited, in the discussion, as the group elaborated on how to access funds
from the government to acquire additional facilities.

According to Charlito Padriaga, president of BBMA, "our group has been

preparing to participate in the BUB process in order to put forward the needs
of the fisherfolk sector to the respective government agencies and the local
government unit."

The Principles of BUB

The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) considers BUB
and Planning as an enabling strategy of the Aquino administration in realizing
governance reforms.

"The concept is simple: it is the opposite of the top-to-bottom planning and

budgeting," explained Ordize Jesus Siva, council member of the National Anti-
Poverty Commission (NAPC).

Siva, who is the president of the Bolilao Empowerment of Neighborhood

Association (BOENAS), an urban poor organization in Iloilo City, has provided
extensive capacity-building activities to his members to optimize the
opportunity being provided by the BUB process.

The BUB approach is guided by 3 principles: convergence, participation, and

empowerment. It aims to achieve community empowerment by encouraging
citizens to take active roles in the community by articulating their needs to the
government and determining what projects are responsive to their needs.

The process will also stimulate partnership between local government and civil
society. It is participatory governance in action and can strengthen LGU-CSO
relations in local development planning and budgeting.

The result of all the local planning and budgeting is the convergence of plans
and priorities as projects are harmonized at the national level by national
government agencies in their programs and budget for implementation.

While the 3 guiding principles of the BUB have become operational, there are
leaders of people's organizations that pointed out to the BUB process as a
venue limited to CSOs that are more organized and who possess the
competency and experience in planning and budgeting.

Observable constraints

Mary Jane Homena, project coordinator of the Western Visayas Network of

Social Development NGOs (WevNET) shared that "CSOs that have
experienced engaging in local budget process before the BUB was adopted
undeniably possessed the edge because its constant participation in the local
budgeting process provided them the knowledge and familiarity of
government's financial terrain."

Homena however admitted that there are gaps in the BUB. One major
limitation of BUB that Homena noticed is that it doesn't provide a level playing
field among more organized and less organized CSOs.

As a result, in the areas covered by the consultations, the more organized

CSOs got better chances of getting their projects integrated in the list of
priorities.

"The least organized CSOs often expressed frustration after the consultations
for many of them have expected that the BUB serves as an assurance that
their respective plans will be integrated in the list of priorities no matter how
insignificant it may be," Homena added.

Homena elaborated that "all of this imbalance, if we can call it as such, is also
a consequence of inadequate preparedness in conducting consultation and
the lack of trained facilitators. These observations were shared by many
CSOs that participated in the process."
They also observed that BUB facilitators who conducted consultations are ill-
equipped in providing the necessary background of BUB.

Less organized CSOs expected that the BUB process will facilitate
participation among a broader range of civil society sectors, especially
organizations that are not linked to organized network of CSOs.

Their expectations fall within the concept why the BUB is adopted and
implemented as a participatory planning and budgeting tool in the first place.
The BUB is not a substitute to CSO representation in the local government as
mandated by the Local Government CODE of 1991. Rather it plays a
complementary role which reinforces existing and institutionalized
participatory governance efforts.

Opportunities through BUB

Making the BUB process more effective in responding to the needs of the
basic sectors demands thorough assessment at this stage of its
implementation. It is imperative that adequate monitoring, evaluation and
feedback system are integrated in its implementation cycle to address
constraints compounding every stage. Doing so can facilitate the potential of
CSO participation and can help CSOs optimize the opportunities being offered
by the BUB process.

The observable weaknesses of the BUB process as indicated in the numerous

consultations illustrates that more work is being demanded from the
government as an implementing arm.

In spite of the massive capacity-building initiatives in preparing for the roll out
of the BUB, competency among implementing personnel and facilitators still
needs to be ensured. As frontliners in the implementation of the BUB, they
must be able to adequately internalize the concept to make the process
effective.

The CSOs, on the other hand, have to seize the opportunity of consolidating
their ranks through the BUB process. It cannot be re-emphasized enough, but
a strong CSO sector can translate to improved participation in local
governance.

CSOs that have constantly engaged in local governance have a lot to share
about how their involvement enhanced the delivery of services to the people.