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...

When the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program was designed, the government publicly promised to limit to five years the giving of the education and health grants. This five-year limit is almost over for the first set of beneficiaries by 2013. The natural policy question then is: Would it be wise...