Despite almost three decades of Philippine decentralization, local governments continue experience varied levels of development and face challenges in delivering devolved basic services. At the same time, the national government has been continuously providing various forms of support for local...

Philippine local governments were given increased autonomy, revenue-raising and expenditure responsibilities under the Local Government Code of 1991 (LGC). At the same time, the LGC instituted the intergovernmental fiscal transfer called the internal revenue allotment (IRA) to help to help local...

The Performance Challenge Fund (PCF), established by the DILG in 2010, is a performance-based incentive program that gives financial subsidies to local government units (LGUs) that are awarded with the Seal of Good Local Governance (SGLG) (DILG MC No. 2017-160). It may be used for projects that...

The Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS) is a data collection system designed to methodically process and integrate local government data for monitoring both micro impacts of macroeconomic shocks and multidimensional poverty (Partnership for Economic Policy 2018). It aims to address existing...

Delivering public goods and services requires identifying the needs of constituents and designing policies and programs to address these needs in the hopes of attaining development. These policy and program interventions should get the appropriate budgetary allocations to be implemented and...

This study examines the fiscal implications of the current criteria of establishing the fiscal viability of local governments in the Philippines. Since the passing of the Local Government Code (LGC) of 1991 thirty years ago, the criteria used to create/convert a local government unit (LGU),...

The unprecedented coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is the most challenging public health crisis the world has faced in a century. It has overwhelmed global and national health service and disaster management infrastructure and brought economies to a standstill/halt. It serves as both an...

The main economic justification for government provision of social protection is to redistribute income to the poor, marginalized and vulnerable in society. In a developing country such as the Philippines, social protection has been a consistent priority of government. In the recent decade,...

One of the priority areas of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) and the Duterte administration is to implement a rightsizing of the bureaucracy through House Bill No. 5707 (HB 5707), and Senate Bill No. 1395 (SB 1395). This reform aims to create a leaner, efficient...

The COVID-19 pandemic, and lockdown measures taken to control its spread, brought economies to a halt, turning the public health crisis into an economic one. Though government responses, such as labor and social welfare protection programs, were similar for recent economic crises like the Global...