“… The goal is to “empower” the poor, to provide them with the kind of assistance that will give them the confidence that, on their own, they can break out of poverty."

1. Office of the President of the Philippines
NATIONAL ANTI-POVERTY COMMISSION
.
The Logic of NAPC Work
Secretary Jose Eliseo Rocamora
23 January 2013
“… The goal is to “empower” the poor, to provide them with the kind of assistance that will
give them the confidence that, on their own, they can break out of poverty. ”

2. The Logic of NAPC Work
“…the NAPC provides a framework, a non-confrontational space for official
representatives of the sectors to work out legislative and other policy issues and
concrete programs with their partner government agencies. For the government
agencies, this venue creates space for encounters with the sectors where both learn
new ways of cooperating, instead of confronting each other.”
NAPC has a large mandate, a small budget, and on its own, not much power. We can coast
and focus on NAPC’s “event organizing” and secretariat tasks. We have chosen instead to
take up the challenge of President Aquino’s reform thrust, and to maximize the potential of
organized sectors as a support base for reform.
There are three key words in the NAPC mandate: anti-poverty, sectors, and participation.
They are linked in the idea that the PNoy government’s anti-poverty program is an
empowerment program. The goal is to “empower” the poor, to provide them with the kind
of assistance that will give them the confidence that, on their own, they can break out of
poverty.
To empower the poor, they have to be assisted in organizing themselves for meaningful, and
effective participation in shaping anti-poverty programs and projects. The organized sectors
encompassed in the NAPC sectoral assemblies and councils will be the main actors in
organizing the unorganized poor. Apart from participating in “invited spaces”, the poor
should develop the capacity for “collective action” in support of asset reform.
These are the broad policy guidelines that have shaped the main areas of NAPC work. (1) To
provide oversight and develop new programs for poverty reduction at both the national and
local levels, (2) develop venues for the participation of the poor through the localization
program, (3) working with the sectors, take a proactive role in pushing implementation of
asset reform. These areas of work are legally mandated in RA8425, the law creating NAPC.
Sectors
Republic Act 8425. Section 7 states:
Section 7. Powers and functions. – The NAPC shall exercise the following powers
and functions:
(4) Ensure meaningful representation and active participation of the basic sectors;
(6) Advocate for the mobilization of funds by the national and local governments to
finance social reform and poverty alleviation programs and capability building
activities of people's organizations;
The main purpose of NAPC work with the sectors is to strengthen organizations of the poor
and to organize the spaces for cooperation between the government and the sectors.
Government engagement with civil society must be undertaken without generating
dependence. Autonomy of civil society and organizations of the poor can best be supported
through programs that help to generate capacity for collective action for contentious
politics.
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3. One of the achievements we are proud of in our two years in NAPC is that we have not had
the kinds of fights among the sectors that characterized NAPC through most of its existence.
We managed to win over NGOs and POs who were either excluded from NAPC in the past or
were unwilling to participate because they believed it was dominated by one CSO political
tendency. Today, for the first time, so-called ‘socdem’ and ‘natdem’ groups are in NAPC and
working together. This inclusiveness is being threatened by organizational changes in the
BUB and in the administration of the Empowerment Fund.
The NAPC sectors are the organizational expression of the poor. They represent thousands
of peoples’ organizations throughout the country who meet in sectoral assemblies, elect
sectoral councils, who then nominate three sectoral representatives from whom the
President appoints an official sectoral representative. The NAPC sectors are the
organizational base for the participation of the poor in government anti-poverty programs.
The Philippines is the only country in Asia with a legally-mandated process for selecting
official representatives of the fourteen sectors listed in RA8425. This provides sectoral
representatives, and their councils with official status in negotiating with government
agencies. Through the NAPC process, the sectors work out a reform agenda with their
partner agencies which are then approved at en banc meetings chaired by the President.
This set-up creates a venue for organized encounters between the sectors and the
government. While the sectors continue to use mass actions and other repertoires of
collective action as a way to advance their advocacies, the NAPC provides a framework, a
non-confrontational space for official representatives of the sectors to work out legislative
and other policy issues and concrete programs with their partner government agencies. For
the government agencies, this venue creates space for encounters with the sectors where
both learn new ways of cooperating, instead of confronting each other.
These spaces have been built at both the national and, more importantly, the local level.
Poverty reduction planning at the municipal level, the center of gravity of “Bottom-up
Budgeting” (BUB) is anchored on consultations by peoples organizations for coming up with
concrete projects, and to give voice to representatives of the poor in the Local Poverty
Reduction Action Teams (LPRAT). Although peoples’ organizations are supposed to be
equal partners of local government officials, they cannot be effective partners without prior
consultations with members of their organizations.
The implementation of BUB 2013 showed the limited geographic reach of organized sectors
and CSOs. We ended up having to work with NGOs and POs in cities and larger towns who
then organized CSO participation in municipalities without established sectoral
organizations. The demand for CSO participation is the most important factor pushing the
strengthening of CSO capacities. NAPC has also developed programs for CSO capability
building.
We have actively worked to generate sectoral participation in BUB and other anti-poverty
programs at the local level. Regional Consultations entitled: “Harnessing Basic Sector/Civil
Society Collectivity and Capacities on the Ground” for local sectoral organizations and other
CSOs have been held in 17 regions. A six month CO (community organizer) training program
for fifty young organizers run by a CSO consortium will finish in February 2013. We gave
grants to three NGOs to generate “peoples proposals” by urban poor groups in danger zones
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4. in Metro Manila who are being relocated in the President’s P50B five year program. We
have initiated a larger program for covering the informal settlers who cannot be reached by
the three NGO grantees, the Social Preparation, Organizing and Technical Team (SPOTT) for
ISFs in Danger Zones.
We also ran a program of Empowerment Grants, providing a total of P50 million to 15 CSOs
with projects covering 94 cities/municipalities. This was to be the pilot run of a larger
program of capacity-building assistance to CSOs. The initial grants were made to CSOs in
various organizing areas (coco farmers, IPs, urban poor, BUB) to generate lessons on the
administration of the larger program. A budget of P250 million was given in the third
quarter of 2011, but the bulk of these funds went to administering the BUB program. The
P54M for empowerment grants was not transferred to NAPC until April 2012, making it
difficult to go beyond the pilot run to a full-fledged implementation of the program.
The Empowerment Fund for FY2013 has been transferred to DILG for implementation.
NAPC was not consulted about this decision. At this point, it is not clear which of the NAPC
capacity building programs for sectors and CSOs can be continued. The grants program will
now be taken over by DILG. The “Harnessing Basic Sector/Civil Society Collectivity and
Capacities on the Ground” regional meetings, the CO (community organizer) training
program, and the work to generate “peoples proposals” by urban poor groups in danger
zones in Metro Manila were all funded out of Empowerment Program funds. We will
continue these programs and find alternative sources of support for them.
Asset reform
One of the main reasons for poverty is that the poor have little in the way of assets, from
secure homes in urban areas, to land in rural areas where more than 70 percent of the poor
are. It has long been established policy of the government to change the distribution of
economic assets through urban and rural asset reform. Working closely with the NAPC
sectoral councils, and using the NAPC’s power to convene inter-agency projects, we have
actively developed projects for pushing asset reform.
With limited staff and budget, we have had to be selective. In rural areas, we are focusing on
coconut farmers and fisher folk among whom you find the highest poverty incidence. In
Carper implementation, we concentrated on Hacienda Luisita and coco lands, the largest
remaining chunk of Carp’able land compared to other crop areas. These programs are all
convergence programs with other government agencies: coconut with the Department of
Agriculture and the Philippine Coconut Authority, and the DAR; fisher folk with the Bureau
of Fish and Aquatic Resources (BFAR); NCR informal settlers with the DILG; social
preparation for the National Greening Program with the DENR and the NCIP.
1) Coconut – The NAPC has played a lead role in the work of the Presidential Task Force
(PTF) on the coconut industry set up by the Presidential Management Staff in May 2011. It
has taken a considerable amount of time to finalize the report to the President because of
contentious issues on the disposition and administration of coco levy funds. These issues
have now been resolved. The submission of the full report to the President only awaits a
framework plan for developing the coconut industry being prepared by the Department of
Agriculture.
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5. At the suggestion of DA Secretary Proceso Alcala, the NAPC concentrated on developing a
Coconut Industry Poverty Reduction Roadmap. This roadmap covers an initial pilot run of
12 provinces with 315,425 poor coconut farmers. Each individual target beneficiary has
been identified through the Registry System for Basic Sectors in Rural Areas (RSBSRA). The
Roadmap has four separate components: a) acceleration of agrarian reform, b) organization
of small coco farmers and workers leading to the establishment of Local Coconut Industry
Development Council (LCIDC), c) social protection coverage, d) support for agro-industrial
projects of coco farmers’ cooperatives. The roadmap has been approved by the PTF for
submission to the President.
NAPC work here has been in close coordination with the NAPC Farmers Sectoral Council.
We have also assisted in the formation of a Multi-sectoral Coco Alliance led by longtime
leaders Ka Oca Santos and Ka Bobby Tanada. The Council and the Alliance have been active
in media work on the issue, have organized mass actions to push for government action in
close coordination with NAPC.
2) Informal Settlers - NAPC has been one of the active members of the National Technical
Working Group on Informal Settler Families (NTWG-ISFs) which was created by the
President in December 2010 under the leadership of the late DILG secretary Jesse Robredo.
The NTWG-ISFs mandate was to oversee and arrive at an alternative framework for the
government’s ISF resettlement program. At the initiative of the NTWG-ISFs, the President
allocated P50B for a five year program to relocate 106,000 ISFs in danger zones in Metro
Manila. Under the NTWG are several committees including the Social Preparation
Committee headed by NAPC.
The implementation of the program was hindered by the lack of legal basis for the NTWG-
ISFs work, and by the allocation of the first P10B for the program to the National Housing
Agency (NHA) by the DBM. NTWG-ISFs framework was radically different from that of the
NHA, making implementation of the first year of the program painfully slow. Under new
leadership, the DILG has speeded up implementation of the second year funding. But one of
the key members of the NTWG-ISFs, the Kilusang Maralita (KM) has protested the violation
of the policy of inclusiveness developed under Sec. Robredo in the accelerated program.
3) Indigenous people/upland farmers –
NAPC has been commissioned by the DENR to organize the “social fencing” component of
the NGP (National Greening Program). The NGP is a DENR program for planting 1.5 billion
trees covering 1.5 million hectares over a period of six years (2011-16) in - i) forestlands; ii)
mangrove and protected areas; iii) ancestral domains; iv) civil and military reservations; v)
urban areas under the greening plan of local government units (LGUs); vi) inactive and
abandoned mine sites; and, vii) other suitable lands. The major tasks for this project are – i)
capacity building of stakeholders through community organizing; ii) formulation of the
community forestry/resource management plan; and, iii) implementation of these plans.
This social fencing project of the NGP emphasizes the conservation, protection and
development of resources that is supported by alternative livelihood opportunities. It is
underpinned by “participatory decision making and the equitable sharing of benefits and
responsibilities by members”. The project also takes cognizance of diverse groups, use and
claims on natural resources in the project sites, thus, processes will be instigated to institute
mechanisms to address potential conflict. NAPC is working closely with the National
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6. Commission for Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) to speed up the processing of IP ancestral land
rights and dealing with conflicts among IPs arising from the spread of mining in IP areas.
4. Fisher folk – Small fisher folk fishing in municipal waters and their families total
1,371,676 families, and have a poverty incidence of 48.9. (NSO 2002). More often than not
they live in makeshift houses in danger zones near the sea coast and on the banks of rivers.
The NAPC Fisherfolk Sector identified Settlement as their priority agenda during their 2011
National Sectoral Assembly. Settlement for the fisher folk sector covers lack of tenurial
security; coastal disaster risks/impacts of climate change; unsustainable
utilization/management of coastal and fisheries resources.
To work out plans, an Inter-agency Task Force on Fisherfolk Settlement chaired by NAPC
was created through the Joint NAPC-DA Administrative Order 2012-01 issued on 13 June
2012. The committee on site selection is headed by BFAR, with HUDCC, DENR, DILG-LMB,
DAR, and NAPC Fisherfolk Sectoral Council representative as members. The committee is
tasked to formulate guidelines for the identification of resettlement areas, and to select
relocation sites. The NAPC Fisherfolk Council will lead the committee on social preparation,
in close coordination with HUDCC and DILG through local housing boards. The committee
will be in charge of beneficiary selection and identification of their capacity building needs.
Poverty Programs
Republic Act 8425. Section 7 states:
Section 7. Powers and functions. – The NAPC shall exercise the following powers
and functions:
(1) Coordinate with different national and local government agencies and the
private sector to assure full implementation of all social reform and poverty
alleviation programs;
(2) Coordinate with local government units in the formulation of social reform and
poverty alleviation programs for their respective areas in conformity with the
National Anti-Poverty Action Agenda;
(3) Recommend policy and other measures to ensure the responsive
implementation of the commitments under the SRA;
(5) Oversee, monitor and recommend measures to ensure the effective formulation,
implementation and evaluation of policies, programs and resource allocation and
management of social reform and poverty alleviation programs;
(7) Provide financial and non-financial incentives to local government units with
counterpart resources for the implementation of social reform and poverty
alleviation programs; and
(8) Submit an annual report to Congress including, but not limited to, all aspects of
its operations and programs and project implementation, financial status and other
relevant data as reflected by the basic reform indicator.
NAPC is the secretariat of the Human Development and Poverty Reduction (HDPR) cluster
of the cabinet, providing minutes, agendas and monitoring the work of cluster TWGs. We
also exercise our oversight function by submitting reports to the two houses of Congress.
We believe that Republic Act 8425, the law creating NAPC requires us to do much more. The
proliferation of poverty programs and projects, many small and ill funded, with overlapping
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7. tasks and in the past, high leakage rates, requires sustained effort to rationalize the poverty
strategy of the government.
We have chosen to interpret the law creating NAPC proactively. We develop an idea, run it
past HDPR, flesh out a program in TWGs with relevant agencies, act as a secretariat once the
project gets going. Our initiatives in CSO capacity building, and in asset reform followed this
process. So too with Salintubig, a program for providing small water project grants to
poorer municipalities, a joint project with DILG and DOH. Because we are developing new
reform programs, it is not enough to write up the policy and pass it on to the bureaucracy
for implementation. New programs such as BUB need to be put into practice and the
program revised in the course of implementation. More often than not, existing NGAs and
their regional staff need to be guided carefully. In NAPC-initiated projects, we have had to
oversee the “implementation” of these programs, acting as secretariat or in the case of BUB,
the PMO.
One of NAPC’s problems is the overbroad interpretation of “NAPC is not an implementing
agency”. Because NAPC money for BUB and for the empowerment program was coursed
through DILG, less than two thirds of the P250M allocated reached NAPC and way delayed
at that. In fact, there is nothing we do (used to do) in BUB, or any of the other projects we’re
into for that matter, which constitutes “implementation”. We don’t construct infrastructure
or deliver services. What we do is explicitly provided for in the law creating NAPC.
All of these initiatives are, at least conceptually, linked to a backbone made up of the large,
national lifeline programs, CCT and PhilHealth, and the localization of poverty reduction
through the BUB. In terms of investment, CCT and Philhealth are by far the largest poverty
programs of the government. As PNoy puts it, these are salbabida programs, providing
substantial assistance to the largest number of poor as quickly as possible. They were
designed to also address longer term concerns about the education and health of the poor,
especially children. By design these are top down programs with little participation by the
poor. They have to be complemented with programs built around local poverty planning
where the poor can participate.
BUB is the main poverty reduction localization program of the government. It is designed to
facilitate the participation of the poor and their organizations. The center of gravity of BUB
is the municipality where organizing participation is easiest. Prior to the formal planning
with the LPRAT (Local Poverty Reduction Action Team), organizations of the poor meet to
decide on what projects they want and who will represent them in the LPRAT. At least 50%
of LPRATS have to come from peoples organizations; LPRATS are not accepted if they do
not have the signatures of at least three CSO representatives. The regional meetings of
NAPC sectors and CSO “service providers” organize this process. Organizing for asset
reform will also feed into this process.
The program was launched in the first quarter of 2012, enabling municipalities to get
funding for their LPRAPS in the FY2013 budget. The original scope of BUB covered 609 of
the poorest municipalities in the country with the identification design giving priority to the
poorest regions, two in Mindanao, one in Eastern Visayas and one in Bicol. 595
municipalities succeeded in submitting LPRAPS. In the FY2013 BUB, municipalities could
get a minimum of P8 million up to P30 million depending on the actual count of poor people
in the municipality. Approved amounts averaged 50%-60% of the municipal development
fund from their IRA (20% of IRA). For the FY2014 BUB, the number of participating
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8. municipalities has been increased to 1233, and the available amount doubled to P15 million
to P50 million.
The BUB program has the potential to radically alter local-central government fiscal
relations and introduce major good governance reforms. It can break the circuit of
patronage, bypassing the regional offices of NGAs where governors and congressmen
negotiate resources that they use for sustaining patronage networks with municipal
mayors. Without access to this level, mayors become dependent on congressmen and
governors. It is at the regional level where congressmen and governors develop relations
with NGA regional directors and other officials with whom they share the spoils of
patronage.
The original design of BUB bypassed the regional level. LPRAPS went directly to the
national level, to NAPC which processed the LPRAPs, making sure there are no disallowed
projects then organizing them by NGA, before turning them over to DBM. The advantage of
having NAPC play this role is that NAPC has no regional offices, no long term regional staff
with whom congressmen and governors could work out patronage relations. This design
was recently changed by DBM, making RPRATS (Regional Poverty Reduction Action Teams)
headed by DILG regional directors responsible for processing LPRAPs, giving them the
power to approve or disapprove
LPRAPS.
NAPC has never managed a program of this magnitude before. We succeeded in generating
more than 90% of the LPRAPS from the 609 focus municipalities under less than favorable
conditions. The process was telescoped into less than two months and the budget for the
BUB PMO was not transferred from DILG until after the end of the program, forcing NAPC to
scramble to find resources from its own minuscule budget. The decision by the DBM and the
DSWD to move the BUB PMO to DILG is occurring in the midst of implementation of BUB
FY2014. We will assist this process, focusing on the following:
1) The production of LPRAPs at the municipal level, assuring maximum CSO
participation. We will also push food production by the poor in school and
community gardens. We are also developing the tools for assisting
municipalities in developing plans for relocating residents from danger zones.
2) We will continue our data management work, maintaining the portal for BUB.
We have also taken the lead in developing tools for rapid CBMS surveys and
finding the resources for assuring that all municipalities undertake CBMS
surveys. This will enable the municipalities to develop baselines for their anti-
poverty work.
3) Manage pilots for multi-municipality planning for economic development, the
second phase of poverty reduction work. Using an “economic geography”
framework, the project would link poorer municipalities to growth centers.
Where municipalities would continue its poverty reduction focus, multi-
municipality planning would emphasize transport and communications, and
facilitating the transition from subsistence to market production by facilitating
the development of marketing networks.
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9. 4) Organize CSO-led monitoring and evaluation of budget implementation of BUB
2013. Since we do not have a budget for this work, we await DBM decision on
our proposed budget. ###
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