How well are pro-poor services delivered in the Philippines? How can Report Cards prompt improvements in public service delivery? This Report Card, produced by the World Bank in collaboration with a Filipino survey research organisation, Social Weather Stations, seeks to complement expert analyses by providing client-led feedback concerning the performance of public services. Five sectors are considered (health care, elementary education, water supply, housing and subsidised rice distribution) and the government’s key poverty reduction programme, Lingap para sa Mahihirap (Caring for the Poor). Recommendations are made to reduce the constraints Filipinos face when dealing with public service providers and to improve service delivery for poor and under-served areas and groups.
The poor have limited awareness of and access to many of the services delivered by public agencies. Improved targeting of pro-poor services is required. With appropriate modifications, Report Cards should be institutionalised to periodically assess a broader range of service delivery at twelve to eighteen month intervals, something in which the Department of Budget and Management has shown an interest.
Promoting pro-poor services through geographical targeting is supported more than the use of identification cards or food stamps, whilst a combination of these two could risk even more leakage. The Lingap programme needs either a major overhaul, or termination.
- If fully implemented, the Health Sector Reform Agenda will, as needed, expand health insurance cover for the poor; improve the quality and their access to primary care facilities; cut medicine costs; and improve the quality of government hospitals
- Public schools are low cost and conveniently located but poor quality. They must address teacher competency through a better development strategy and make better use of Parent Teacher Associations to improve their responsiveness and accountability
- Poor and rural people consume unacceptably low amounts of water, are mostly excluded from full waterworks systems, and are disproportionately burdened by the need to treat all sources of water before drinking
- Poor people are dissatisfied with their housing, are excluded from housing associations due to eligibility requirements, and have limited access to housing programmes due to lack of awareness, lack of need and high transaction costs
- National Food Authority-subsidised rice is low cost and low quality, has a limited availability and is accessible to non-poor people
- The Lingap programme ineffectively targets the poor, is subject to political patronage and requires a targeted information campaign to disseminate its benefits, eligibility criteria and details of how clients can access the programme.
In the Philippines, the most suitable model for institutionalising the Report Card would be a government coordinating agency engaging an independent organisation to complete the Report Card in consultation with, but independent of, public service providers. On-going monitoring and independent auditing should be key elements of programme management.
- Improving the standard of primary health facilities and placing more of them in poor and remote areas would enhance pro-poor services and reduce the current inefficient use of hospitals for primary care
- The drop-out rate amongst children from poor families could be reduced by programmes providing in-school healthcare, full exemption from miscellaneous fees, better qualified and trained teachers, and/or targeted scholarships
- Regardless of location or income levels, the government should provide full waterworks systems wherever there is a demand and a willingness to pay for such a service and develop policies such as targeted subsidies to support this demand
- Government must focus on the security of land tenure, considered vital to housing satisfaction; better inform the poor of housing programmes; increase the private sector’s role in housing assistance; and explore alternatives to home ownership
- More ERAP (poor) stores, providing low-cost basic commodities, should be located in disadvantaged areas and the government should explicitly target rice support to the poor, ideally through geographically targeting areas via special National Food Authority stores
- Without losing legislators’ support for appropriating funds, the government must reduce or eliminate political intervention in the allocation of poverty reduction funds at the grassroots level and tightly enforce rule-based targeting criteria.
