MANILA (Mindanao Examiner / Nov. 17, 2011) – Today, Filipinos take for granted the ability to activate a mobile phone in a few minutes, the P1 promotional airfares, and 24-hour water service. But what appears commonplace now are actually results of long and challenging reform efforts in the past.
The case studies featured in The Asia Foundation’s new book, Built on Dreams, Grounded in Reality: Economic Policy Reform in the Philippines, illuminate the difficult battles fought, and in some cases won, and the individual efforts and sacrifices made to turn the dream of a better country into reality. The book is published with the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID).
The book launch will be held on November 21 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Makati City. Dr. Steven Rood, the Asia Foundation’s country representative in the Philippines, will provide opening remarks, followed by messages from our partners, USAID Mission Director Gloria Steele and AusAID Minister-Counsellor Titon Mitra.
The book recounts the political battles of five highly regarded reforms: introducing competition and liberalization in sea transport, civil aviation, and telecommunications; instituting the privatization of water service in Metro Manila; and passing a property rights law allowing faster administrative titling of residential lands.
It also documents two long-running but less successful reform efforts to address major enduring developmental challenges: improving tax administration and reforming the National Food Authority, a government corporation responsible for ensuring food security, particularly the stability of supply and price of rice.
As the case studies exemplify, Steele notes the importance of local initiative and authority in engendering reform: Development must be led and driven by the leadership and citizens of developing countries, underscoring the importance of country ownership and responsibility in pursuing their own development priorities.
Mitra adds that the case studies not only make compelling reading, they also present a
strong argument for adopting a new approach to understanding and supporting reform initiatives based on: careful analysis of the local context; an in-depth assessment of key stakeholders and their differing motivations for supporting change; taking advantage of opportunities as they arise and perseverance, sometimes over many years.
The book not only examines how and why economic policy reform happens in the Philippines, it also hopes to contribute to the international discussion regarding how to maximize the effectiveness of development aid in bringing about institutional reform.
Development practitioners have begun to evaluate aid effectiveness, and The Asia Foundation felt it could contribute to the debate by disseminating a better understanding of competitiveness and economic reform in the Philippines, Rood said.
“This is based on an examination of cases – successful and unsuccessful – to help ground theoretical debates in reality. We hope that the reform cases featured, in line with the political economy approach, will inform future projects of the Philippine government, non-governmental organizations, and development agencies,” he said.
Noted development author, Dr. Adrian Leftwich, who also wrote the foreword for the book, concludes that if the international community is looking for innovative ways of working for progressive institutional or policy change than can promote growth and political stability, reduce poverty, and extend inclusion, then there is no better place to start than where, when, how, and under what circumstances it can act to support the emergence or activities of local developmental entrepreneurs, leaders, and coalitions.
The book offers an important set of illustrations of just how that has been and can be done. The book’s contributors include Raul Fabella, Bruce Tolentino, Beulah Maria de la Peña, Karl Kendrick Chua, Enrico Basilio, Calixto Chikiamco, Maria Cherry Lyn Salazar-Rodolfo, Mary Grace Santos, and Jaime Faustino.
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