2023-06-08-世界银行-菲律宾农业公共支出审查_特别关注Mandanas裁决对农业食品系统的影响（英）_106页_10mb

Philippines Agriculture Public Expenditure Review: Analysis and Summary

Agriculture Public Expenditures Review
Focus on Mandanas Ruling Implications for Agri-food System

Key Findings and Recommendations

1. Background and Context

• The Philippines' agriculture sector faces challenges despite economic growth, with low productivity, high poverty, and underinvestment in public goods.
• The "New Thinking" and "One DA Agenda" aim to modernize agriculture through consolidation, modernization, industrialization, and professionalization, but public expenditure patterns have not fully aligned with this strategy.
• The Mandanas Ruling (2022) increases devolution of agricultural services to local government units (LGUs), but this must accompany policy changes to be effective.

1. Challenges in Public Expenditure

   • Strategic Alignment: Current spending favors single-commodity programs (e.g., rice subsidies), diverting funds from holistic approaches like climate-smart agriculture (CSA) and research.
   • Effectiveness of Spending: Input subsidies are inefficient, leading to low disbursement rates, regressivity, and poor targeting. For instance, fertilizer subsidies often miss farmers or delay delivery.
   • Devolution Implementation: Risk of ineffective local delivery due to LGU capacity gaps, funding shortfalls, and weak coordination.

2. Recommendations

   • Short-term: Shift input subsidies to an e-voucher system or decouple support payments to improve efficiency and farmer flexibility.
   • Medium to Long-term: Reduce subsidies on private goods (e.g., fertilizers) and invest in underfunded public goods like R&D, extension services, and infrastructure.
   • Institutional Reforms: Adopt results-based monitoring and evaluation, enhance public financial management (PFM), and strengthen coordination between central and local governments.
   • Devolution Focus: Carefully select functions for transfer, build LGU capacity, ensure alignment with national interests, and address funding gaps through targeted mechanisms.

3. Distributional and Policy Impacts

   • Spending is misaligned with poverty and regional needs, disproportionately favoring Luzon and rice-producing areas.
   • Policy reforms should prioritize equitable distribution, avoid elite capture, and consider externalities like climate resilience.

4. Concluding Note

The review underscores the need for integrated reforms to make public expenditure more effective, equitable, and supportive of sustainable agricultural development.