Guidelines for the inaugural welcome words
Juan Pablo Guerrero, Network Director, GIFT
Manila, September 17, 2015
Fiscal transparency improvements are the result of an effort that involves many stakeholders over a long period of time:government bureaucracies + government champions +Civil Society Organizations + Intl. Finance Institutions + academia + experts.
Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency is about having these actors gathering & working together: a flexible framework for an action network devoted to action & impact.
Lead Stewards: the Department of Budget & Management of the Government of the Philippines and the Secretary of Planning and Budget of Brazil, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the International Budget Partnership and the International Federation of Accountants.
General stewards: over 20 stewards that include CSO, governments of Mexico and US Treasury, and donors like DFiD and Ford Foundation.
GIFT (non-profit) financial support comes from the WB, Hewlett Foundation and the World Bank.
Mission: Advance and institutionalize significant & sustainable improvements in fiscal transparency, participation and accountability in countries around the world, by working on global norms, incentives, peer-learning, and technical assistance.
The Fiscal Openness Working Group was established by the Open Government Partnership in 2013, by GIFT and the government of Brazil.
Its objective is to support OGP governments in the implementation of their budget transparency-related commitments, as well as to encourage other non-OGP governments to promote fiscal transparency.
The goals of this workshopin Manila are:
a)Provide a forum for peer-to-peer exchange learning on the process to advance fiscal transparency based on a dialogue CSO-MoF
b)Learn about an incredible source of findings & knowledge: the Open Budget Survey 2015
c)Offer access to international good practices, tools, norms, assessments, and technical expertise on fiscal transparency and public participation
d)Motivate additional governments to become champions of fiscal transparency & participation
e)Define a GIFT regional work plan for the Asia Pacific Area in the near future
The process for Fiscal Transparency is one that finds along the way powerful resistances and opposition.
We go against the tide: in fact, governments and the complex institutions that compose them,are naturally disposed against transparency and accountability.
So we need champions that open doors and windows from inside, to allow the light to come into the house.
And we need civil society participation to demand this to happen, to follow up on the pressure, to promote a dialogue that gives meaning to the effort, to cheer up the champions when they get tired, and, as important, to complain and protest when they capitulate.
One wonderful element that keeps this complicate balance together is TRUST. And this is a wonderful consequence of transparency.Governments have very few opportunities to earn trust: transparency opens this opportunity.
An extraordinary process takes place when former civil society activists become government decisions makers. In some cases, this triggers change in a fast –unprecedented- ways and with good results.
From this perspective, it has been a privilege for GIFT to count on the Department of Budget and Management of the Philippines, and to count on his leader, Florencio Butch Abad, as one of the lead stewards of the network. It is a privilege to rely on a partner who is absolutely convinced about the benefits of fiscal transparency. The results have been inspiring.
My gratitude for Secretary Abad, and my gratitude to your wonderful team, for an amazing, fruitful collaboration. We really hope that these changes in the Philippines are here to stay, and that the main beneficiaries of transparency, the people of your country, will be here in the future to make sure this process continues.
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