




In the Philippines, the sectors of social welfare and health have been fully devolved to local governments since 1992. In 1999, the Municipality of Concepcion, in Iloilo, adopted a vision of eliminating poverty completely by the year 2020 and forged, accordingly, multi-sectorial programmes and related actions where the cross-cutting themes were population, health, and environment. However, the first step in this direction was to renovate the government machinery from inside, reinforcing the commitment of the executive personnel to become promptly responsive to local inhabitants’ needs.
Beneficiaries:
The overall beneficiaries of the programmes comprise about 60% of the total population of the city of Concepcion.
Results:
The combined effects of the actions contained in the programmes resulted in the halving of poverty from 87% of the population in 2000 to 47% in 2004. The initiatives sought to arrest dramatic health problems as well as environmental degradation, with a range of positive results:
Challenges and risks:
The main challenges and risks for this particular case are found in the high dependency of local government budgets on their Internal Revenue Allotment; the recent fiscal crisis in the national government as it affects local economic development initiatives; a lack of technical capability to implement and sustain the initiatives; weak enforcement of local government poverty reduction-related plans and policies; poor monitoring and evaluation of poverty reduction-related programs and projects; and changes in leadership that may affect the program’s sustainability.