German professor notes LGUs are not financially independent

Local governments in the country are saddled with "unfunded mandates" that tended to hamper the purpose of the Local Government Code to promote local autonomy and decentralization, a German professor on public finance said yesterday.

Professor Paul Bernd Spahn, of Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, said studies about local governments in the Philippines showed that these local units "get the mandate but not the funding."

The study was also collated with inputs from participants of the Forum on Fiscal Decentralization in Support of Local Governance, which was conducted in Cebu Marriott Hotel yesterday.

Spahn said the proposed amendment of the Constitution for a change of government form, from unitary to federalism, is not the answer to the problems of the Philippines because it does not empower LGUs in the real sense, the "problem is not in the law but in the daily implementation."

The forum in Cebu was part of the countrywide activities that the German Agency for Technical Cooperation Philippines and the Konrad Adenauer Sittung Philippines, in coordination with the National Economic and Development Authority, have been conducting.

The forum has been aimed at ferreting out the "distinct difference and unmistakable impressions the Local Government Code has made in the Philippine society" after 15 years since its enactment on October 10, 1991.

Spahn told participants, in the Cebu gathering, that scholars of federalism have agreed that local autonomy would not exist without fiscal autonomy, which is also imperative for decentralization to work well in the country.

A showcase of this situation is that many LGUs in the Philippines are dependent on grants, and on the 40 percent share of the internal revenue allotment from the national government, he said.

Bohol Governor Erico Aumentado, also the president of the Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines and of the League of Provinces of the Philippines, also spoke yesterday in the forum.

He appealed for support in the call for an increase in IRA share of local governments-from 40 percent to 50 percent-because LGUs have been "solely responsible in the delivery of basic services."

Engineer Nigel Paul Villarete, Cebu City Planning and Development coordinator, added that part of the IRA shares of LGUs even goes to implementation of national government projects and programs.

A government office or team should be tasked to check if the local development plan is attuned with that of the national government, Villarete suggested. - Cristina C. Birondo