The Aquino administration through the Human Development and Poverty Reduction Cluster (HDPRC) and Good Governance and Anti-Corruption Cluster (GGACC) launched the Bottom-up Budgeting (BUB) exercise in 2012 in time for the preparation of the 2013 National Expenditure Program. The BUB process is...

Bottom-up Budgeting (BUB) is an adaptation of the participatory budgeting model in identifying and providing solutions to poverty at the municipal/city level. Leaders of civil society organizations engage with LGU officials in formulating a poverty alleviation plan to be considered in preparing...

Executive Order No. 27 Series of 2017 mandated all government agencies and instrumentalities, including all local government units (LGUs), to implement the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) and Public Investment Program (PIP) for the period 2017-2022. This triggered the PDP localization efforts...

The high level of casualties, population displacements and economic costs from recent disaster events still point to necessary augmentations in disaster preparedness. Policy has to be revisited, institutional arrangements have to be reviewed and resource mobilization issues have to be addressed....

Two key recent events pushed forward the country's decentralization agenda. In 2019, the Mandanas-Garcia Supreme Court ("Mandanas") ruling increased the tax base for intergovernmental fiscal transfers in support of local governments' autonomy and revenue-raising capacity. In 2021, Executive...

The paper examines the progress being made in local finance reforms and indicates pathways to advance those reforms. A summary of the effects of decentralization is given as a contextual background for the discussion of local finance reforms. The inefficient tax assignment has constrained the...