CEBU, Philippines - The Department of Trade and Industry Cebu Provincial Office (DTI-Cebu) successfully concluded the first 2013 Bottom-Up Budgeting (BUB) training on livelihood for the agrarian reform beneficiaries of three communities in Balamban, Cebu yesterday.
The BUB approach is envisioned as a poverty reduction strategy of the national government in order to meet one of its millennium development goals which aim to decrease the poverty rate from 26.5 percent in 2009 to 16.6 percent by 2015.
The implementation of BUB was institutionalized through the joint memo circular made by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC).
The Bottom-Up Approach to Planning and Budgeting shall ensure the inclusion of the funding requirements for the development needs of at least 300 of the 609 selected focus local government units.
These are identified by the Human Development and Poverty Reduction Cluster and the Good Governance and Anti-Corruption Cluster in the budget proposals of participating national agencies.
The participating agencies shall be responsible for ensuring that the local government unit implementing the BUB projects submits regular accomplishment reports.
These agencies include the Department of Agriculture (DA), Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR),Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Department of Health (DOH), Department of Education (DepEd) , Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), Department of Energy (DOE), Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth),National Electrification Administration (NEA), Department of Tourism (DOT),DILG, and DTI.
NAPC, on the other hand, shall provide the status reports of the BUB projects through a parallel monitoring system and an interactive website that could be publicly viewed and validated.
Under the National Expenditure Program, the national government has allocated P8.397 billion for the BUB project implementation among the 565 local government units.
Among the priority poverty reduction projects that are in line with the BUB approach include the skills development training on “lampakanay†basket weaving for exports in Balamban and the “bayong†development project in San Remegio for the production of utility and fashionable “bayongsâ€.
According to DTI-Cebu, each project has an allotted budget of P100 000 and P250 000 respectively.
The training activity in Balamban already began last Wednesday while the program in San Remegio will start on September 24. /JMD (FREEMAN)