Philippines

The theme of the 2013 Philippines development forum which is held on February 4-5, 2013 at Davao city is President Aquino's social contract: moving forward in achieving... Show More + inclusive growth and good governance. Show Less -

The Kapit-Bisig Laban Sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (KALAHI-CIDSS) program was set up in 2002 to alleviate rural poverty. The... Show More + program aims to achieve this by providing resources to poor rural municipalities to invest in public goods and by reviving local institutions to enhance people's participation in governance. KALAHI-CIDSS was originally targeted at the poorest 25 percent of municipalities in 42 of the poorest provinces in the Philippines. KALAHI-CIDSS was designed to minimize the risk of elite capture and it appears to have been successful in doing so. The project had a positive impact on household consumption. Consistent with the project development objective, KALAHI-CIDSS led to an increase in participation in barangay assemblies, associated with greater knowledge about the barangay's income and expenses. The project led to improvements in basic service delivery. The project also had positive impacts on a number of social capital outcomes, which have been shown to be important determinants of household welfare. Show Less -

This paper uses unique survey data to provide, for the first time in the literature, direct evidence that vote buying in poor economies is associated with lower provision... Show More + of public services that disproportionately benefit the poor. Various features of the data and the institutional context allow the interpretation of this correlation as the equilibrium policy consequence of clientelist politics, ruling out alternate explanations (such as, for example, poverty driving both vote buying and health outcomes). The data come from the Philippines, a country context that allows for measuring vote buying during elections and services delivered by the administrative unit controlled by winners of those elections. The data reveal a significant, robust negative correlation between vote buying and the delivery of primary health services. In places where households report more vote buying, government records show that municipalities invest less in basic health services for mothers and children; and, quite strikingly, as a summary measure of weak service delivery performance, a higher percentage of children are severely under-weight. Show Less -

The Philippine economy has emerged as one of the fastest growing economies in East Asia, with growth accelerating to 7.1 percent in the third quarter. The acceleration... Show More + of domestic demand since the first quarter of 2012 reflects the country's strong macroeconomic fundamentals, stronger government finances, and high confidence in the Aquino government's commitment to reform. Sound macroeconomic fundamentals, as seen in low inflation, and large current account surpluses and foreign exchange reserves, have continued to shield the economy from external headwinds, while a more diversified export basket allowed total exports to grow, despite the decline in electronics exports. Overall, the economy is expected to expand by over six percent this year, up from 3.9 percent last year. However, more structural reforms are needed to create more and better jobs, as the overall labor market outcome has been less responsive to the higher economic growth. The economy needs to shift from consumption towards investment, both public and private. The special focus sections of this update demonstrate that the implementation of such reforms can have high payoffs in terms of jobs and inclusive growth. Finally, by scaling-up and broadening several open government/open data initiatives in the country, the strengthening of inclusive institutions would be greatly enhanced, in line with the core principles of this government. Show Less -

This paper examines the impact of a large supply-side education intervention in the Philippines, the Third Elementary Education Project, on students' national achievement... Show More + test scores. It finds that the program significantly increased student test scores at grades 4 to 6. The estimation indicates that two-year exposure to the program increases test scores by about 4.5 to 5 score points. Interestingly, the mathematics score is more responsive to the education reform than are other subjects. The analysis also finds that textbooks, instructional training of teachers, and new classroom construction particularly contributed to these outcomes. The empirical results imply that early-stage investment improves student performance at later stages in the elementary school cycle, which suggests that social returns to such an investment are greater than what the current study demonstrates. Show Less -

This report includes seven chapters. The first chapter provides a macro view of how climate change is impacting the Philippines. It highlights the enabling policy and... Show More + institutional environment for climate change adaptation. It also describes current adaptation initiatives of the national and local governments. Second chapter provides the background and description of the World Bank-Norwegian Trust Fund (WB-NTF) 'climate change adaptation in coastal communities: a community-based approach' Project. It presents the framework of the adaption approach, as initially conceived by the project planners, and shows how this has evolved to respond to situations on the ground as implementation progressed. It describes the multi-stage process of selecting the project sites and the strategies adopted in achieving the project objectives. Third chapter provides an overview of the in-situ scientific studies and assessments that were carried out to generate information that guided the identification of biophysical adaptation measures. It also describes the strategies and processes employed by the facilitating agencies in preparing and mobilizing the communities to adopt the measures. Fourth chapter describes the project inputs and the adaptation measures initiated at each site. It describes the strategies and processes adopted by the facilitating agencies, given each site's socio-economic and political context, and the disaster and climate risks faced. It highlights the catalyzing role of different project stakeholders in achieving early gains. Fifth chapter summarizes the adaptation actions in the three sites and the initial impacts of the actions taken as perceived by different project stakeholders. Sixth chapter attempts to distill lessons from the project experience and highlights the facilitating factors that made possible the adaptation actions described in the preceding chapters. Although the project experience is short and the work is still in progress, there are valuable lessons to be learned to shape future work in climate change adaptation in Philippine coastal communities. The chapter also takes note of the myriad on challenges that Local Government Units (LGUs) and coastal communities faced in their efforts to adapt to the impacts of climate change. Seventh chapter provides conclusions distilled from the project experience and suggestions to build from lessons learned and gains achieved in climate change adaptation. Some of the suggestions are being contemplated as downstream projects for which the World Bank Office Manila (WBOM) has taken some initial steps since October 2011. Show Less -

The objective was to demonstrate the technical and operational feasibility of a grid-connected PV plant in a developing country and to demonstrate its operation in conjunction... Show More + with a hydro plant. The convertible loan structure was intended to create incentives toward achieving the demonstration objectives of the project. At the time when the project was conceived it was expected that solar PV panel prices would fall in the future. In that case, projects of this type were expected to become viable without subsidization and this project would have served to reduce the first-of-a-kind barrier to wider implementation. Show Less -

Since 2002 Public Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) has funded 27 activities in the Republic of the Philippines worth $4.71 million, four of which are... Show More + ongoing. Five of these activities have been funded under the Sub-National Technical Assistance (SNTA) program for a total of $1.06 million. The objective of this assistance was to build on the country framework report (CFR) by updating the progress in the infrastructure sector since 2000, conducting focused case studies to draw lessons learned from past experiences, and investigating a number of cross-cutting issues that were not explicitly detailed in the CFR, such as the public sector role in Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). This activity included: a study tour for regulators and officials from the planning agency to the University of Florida; several working papers and case studies on private sector participation; and two rounds of stakeholder consultations to identify their key concerns and seek feedback. Show Less -

Despite modest economic growth over the past decade, the Philippines have made little progress in reducing poverty. In this regard, the Philippines is an outlier in... Show More + the region, seemingly unable to translate economic growth into meaningful poverty reduction. This underscores the fact that structural poverty remains a binding constraint to equitable growth. Furthermore, the Philippines remains highly vulnerable to climatic and other adverse shocks, making the task of poverty reduction even more challenging. To help meet short-term consumption needs while fostering investment in human capital to help break the intergenerational transmission of poverty, the Philippines launched a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program in early 2008. This study represents a first step toward rigorously documenting the causal impact of the CCT program, focusing on school enrollment from a small selective sample survey. Primarily for illustrative purposes, the study concentrated on areas where education outcomes were low before the intervention, to determine the impact on marginalized areas. The study compared school enrollment before and after CCT program implementation, using panel data of about 2,000 CCT and non-CCT children from 900 sample households in three regions of the country. The baseline data was collected in 2008 before program implementation, matched to the follow-up survey which was conducted in 2011. Under the CCT program, households receive cash transfers conditional on school enrollment and regular attendance of children aged 6-14, therefore the analysis used the sample of children aged 6-14 during the baseline (2008), and the same children aged 9-17 at the time of the follow-up survey (2011). Show Less -

It is recognized by both private and public sectors that an adequate education plays an important part in stemming the spread of HIV. While the topic of sex education... Show More + among primary and secondary schools remains a contentious issue for a predominantly Catholic country like the Philippines, teaching health professionals about HIV/AIDS is a vital part of the subject of infectious diseases. At present, there is a need to evaluate the current curriculum of health professionals in terms of the adequacy of the teaching about HIV/AIDS. This study was undertaken to review the present state of HIV/AIDS education in undergraduate health professionals' curriculum and to assess the response of local tertiary private hospitals to the emerging threat of HIV/AIDS. It analyzes the current situation of HIV/AIDS lectures and discussions in public tertiary education academic curricula of health professionals in the Philippines. It determines the perceptions of different stakeholders as to the sufficiency of the current level of lectures and discussions on HIV/AIDS. It describes the private hospital sector response to the HIV/AIDS problem. This study was divided into two parts. The first part dealt with the first and second objectives, focusing on the training of health professionals for HIV/AIDS. The second part dealt with the third objective, investigating the response of the private sector to the HIV/AIDS problem. Show Less -