Parliaments role in gender responsive budget
Parliamentarians can play their role to analyse whether allocations of relevant sector is in line with macroeconomic policies that benefit women
Md Osman Ali
Gender-responsive budget initiatives provide a way of assessing the impact of government revenue and expenditure on the different needs of women and men, girls and boys. Women and men have similar needs in the area of health especially in respect to influenza, malaria, diarrhoea etc. But women have greater and more different needs than men in reproductive health, adolescent girls health etc. Engendering the budget is the best way of meeting the aspirations and needs of men and women, boys and girls and of ensuring gender equity.
Gender issues are embedded in the Medium Term Budget Framework (MTBF) introduced for budget preparation which is an opportunity for further engendering the budget on a concrete basis. Emphasis is given on the linkages between a ministrys stated objectives and activities and advancement of womens rights
MTBF process includes a table generated from the RCGP database of Recurrent, Capital, Gender and Poverty (RCGP) model, identifying the gender related expenditure allocations within the ministry/divisions budget.
Gender budget with fourteen criteria regarding performance on womens advancement, which are essential aspect of promoting gender equality have been introduced. The Ministries are to provide estimates of development budget allocation, according to criteria, for gender equality and poverty related activities within the sectoral policy. Gender budget analysis of all ministries is done by Ministry of Finance and submitted to the Parliament at the Budget sessions. The government presents the gender budget since fiscal 2009-10, explaining the policies and strategies for women advancement of various ministries/ divisions that have implications on women development. Initially gender budget was allocated for 4 ministries. There is now allocation of gender budget for 43 ministries/divisions which are concerned with empowering Women and gender equality.
Allocation for women development was Tk27,248 crore in 2009-10, which increased to Tk1,12,019 crore in 2017-18. Average annual growth rate in last 7 years was around 22 percent. Allocation for womens advancement compared to total budget is 23 percent during this period. In the fiscal year 2018-19, allocation for women development is Tk1,37,742 crore which is 29.65 percent of total budget . It is the largest budget for womens development in the history of Bangladesh. The gender budget is not actually a separate allocation. It is just a separate analysis and calculation of part of the national budget from the viewpoint of gender responsive activities of ministries / divisions to integrate gender in the mainstream of their development efforts.
Budget becomes Parliaments property after it reaches Parliament. Parliaments role in the budget is often confined to budgetary approval and oversight, while budget formulation and execution are more commonly functions of the executive . Nonetheless, there is an emerging trend in legislature to strengthen their budgetary role. Parliamentarian now exercises their responsibilities to ascertain the relevance and validity to strategies of gender issues and National Women development policy (NWDP), 2011 underpinning the contents of the budget document.
Parliamentarians can play their role to analyze whether allocations of relevant sector in line with macroeconomic policies that benefit women. The national budget is gender neutral which is supposed benefit women and men, girls and boys equally. In fact, budgets reinforce existing inequality, because the different need, roles, and capabilities of women and men are not given due consideration during implementation of budget. Besides, budget allocation for women among different ministries/divisions does not necessarily mean that women will be ensured more benefits. In fact the budgetary allocation will be useful only when womens different role and need are taken into consideration and allocation is directly for womens development. Hence parliament holds a discussion to prepare a road map, or a clear framework specifying which sectors the money is allocated to and how it will be utilized to benefit women.
Public investment in health, education, and social protection is vital for womens empowerment, But Health sector is not given due care in budget. Its allocation of Tk23,383 crore in 2018-19 which is more by Tk2,704 crore from that of the year 2017-2018. But share has actually decreased from 5.39 percent to 5 percent in 2018-19 (The Daily observer, 14 June, 2018). This scenario clearly depicts the little scope of improvement in terms of women reproductive health, sexual health, Maternal, Child, Adolescent girl Health etc.
Education sector also lacks due attention. Its allocation Tk53,054 crore is about 11.41 percent of the total outlay in 2018-19. It was 12.6 percent of the total outlay in the outgoing fiscal year.(The daily Star, June 8,2018). Thus allocation of education sector out of the total outlay has been decreasing over last few years. Moreover, there is little scope for investment on quality education due to bigger operation cost. Parliamentarian can therefore recommend an increased reallocation to education and health sector that have direct benefit women and children. An increased investment in education and health requires to provide quality education and good health especially for employment opportunity for half of male and female younger population available from demographic dividend to us.
There is budgetary allocation of 125cr for women entrepreneur Fund and women development special fund to boost women participation in work force for 2018-19. Women participation in the workforce did not grow so long significantly due to absence of quality education. This kind of budget allocation is made in every year, but not utilized properly. Hence the budget needs to have any indication or guideline on how and where to spend the money. Parliament should discuss the matter to undertake a result based monitoring system and assessment how to develop women in working-age group, in demographic dividend, into productive work force.
Amendment of budget is parliaments legal power that can increase or decrease allocation of gender budget according to availability of resources and progress of expenditure of allocation. Parliament can also examine tax laws to recommend amendments or the introduction of new laws that are gender sensitive and a analyze revenue measures, such as sales and fuel taxes, for its impact on vulnerable groups such as women. The parliament discusses, among others, item wise budget allocation, proposals of amendments, new plan, failure in implementation of previous years plan, and also implementation of the proposed plan etc. In fact the budgetary role of the parliamentarian lacks of gender dimension. This means that there is no awareness and commitment among the parliamentarian as regards implementation the NWDP, 2011. Hence the parliamentarian needs orientation on resources mobilization to comply commitment of implementation National strategy and NWDP, 2011.
Parliamentarians need accurate, simple and timely information to use in the budget. But there is an inadequate legislative scrutiny due to insufficient time for debate; absence of required information, gender disaggregated data, required resources and gender expertise for analysis of the budget. Hence Parliaments own institutional capacity is to be developed by strengthening Budget Analysis and Monitoring Unit (BAMU) by professional expertise for analysis, monitoring and over sight of Budget in gender perspective. Parliamentary staff capacity should be strengthened so that briefs on analysis of the gender budget are made available in a time. Parliamentarians are also to be equipped with the necessary tools, as in South Africa and Sweden, to examine a budget from a gender perspective . Parliamentarian, if there is a legislative research unit in the parliament, can have technical knowledge and other insights about gender budget and then participate meaningfully in the approval process of budget.
Parliamentary committees of ministries/divisions as In the UK and India can be involved in reviewing the finance bill . In the Rules of Procedure (Serial no 111/3) of Bangladesh parliament there is an embargo in the budget making procedure restricting ministry -related committees from participating in the budget making process. As result committee on women and children Affairs and other relevant committees having gender potentials cannot examine their budget in gender perspective.
The ROP of the Parliament can be amended to allow Committee on Estimates, the ministry -related committees including that of women and Children Affairs to scrutinize the budget in gender perspective. The Committees has to be empowered by think tanks, data disaggregated by sex, economists and academics to independently analyze the budget from gender perspective.
The practice of reporting on progress of gender equality aspects assigning a percentage of the project and programmes expenditure to show the benefits of women is sometimes based on a guess work. These reporting cannot be considered as accurate. To obtain more accurate information, the development expenditure should include analysis showing how much expenditure is targeted to benefit women and improves gender-disaggregated data.
The claims of the ministry/division about having positive impacts on womens advancement and rights cannot be established in absence of monitoring using sex disaggregated data for baseline and reporting. There is no real evidence of such claims, because there is no a gender disaggregated beneficiary assessment of activity. Hence the parliament can ask to undertake gender disaggregated beneficiary assessments of the major activities of line ministries/divisions
The informal women parliamentary caucus (WPC) with an 11-member core group of women parliamentarian carried out analyzing the national budget for Ministry of women and children 2010-11 from gender perspective. The WPC can, therefore, be involved to make parliamentarian to play proactive roles in ensuring adequate resource mobilization for gender equitable allocations in national budget in 2018-19 for promoting women reproductive and child health, women educational facilities. The WPC can be given responsibility to take up with parliament to specify ways for efficient and optimum utilization of budget for women advancement and to make parliament more accountable for it. The WPC can assist the government form a monitoring unit consisting of technical assistance from civil society and research institute to monitor to what extent the gender budget allocations is utilized properly and gender budget goes to benefit women.
The writer is a retired official of the Planning Commission
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