Gender Responsive Budgeting in Bangladesh

Gender Responsive Budgeting in Bangladesh Dr. Kaniz N. Siddique Consultant UN Women, Bangladesh

Background In the 2010 Human Development Index (HDI), Bangladesh ranked 129 among 164 countries, and according to the Gender Inequality Index (GII) it ranked 116 among 138 countries In the area of women’s advancement, Bangladesh have made important first-round progress in terms of visibility and mobility, education, economic participation, political and social empowerment Beyond these achievements lie new constraints and new challenges which are emerging in the context of emerging realities

Background Bangladesh still experiences the presence of all pervasive and endemic gender based discriminations and depravations in all social and economic levels, among all castes, religions, ethnic groups in both urban and rural areas of the county

Gender in the National Budget What is Integration of Gender into the National Budget? Recognizing economic significance of the reproductive (household /care) sector and the need for public investment in these activities Recognizing that the roles, responsibilities, and capabilities of men and women are different, they must not be stereotyped with a pre-conceived perception and these roles and responsibilities must not be held rigidly

Gender in the National Budget Recognizing that the seemingly gender-neutral allocation of budgetary resources can have a different impact on men and women Recognizing the welfare outcomes of the budget on men and women Recognizing the importance of creating an enabling condition for women to participate in the economic growth process

Gender in the National Budget Rational for introducing Gender Responsive Budget Mainstreaming gender issues in macroeconomic policy Maintaining balance between the household (care) and the market economy Underscoring the Role of the Government in reducing poverty and inequality and ensuring equity Reducing discrimination against women and gender-gaps In the particular context of Bangladesh gender budgeting makes sense because the government declared National Women Development Policy

Gender in the National Budget of Bangladesh Introduction of Gender analysis in the MTBF Process Creation of thr RCGP model (Data base) Introduction of Gender budget Report

Gender in the National Budget of Bangladesh- MTBF GoB is implementing Financial Reform where Medium-Term Budget Framework (MTBF) process is being introduced for budget formulation All the ministries are brought under MTBF process These created an opportunity for directly including poverty reduction and women’s advancement issues into the budgeting process

Gender in the National Budget of Bangladesh-MTBF MTBF ministries have to fill out Budget Circular 1 (BC-1) In section-1 of BC-1, the line ministries have to mention the mission statement of the respective ministries In section-2 the line ministers have to describe Medium-Term Strategic Objectives and list the activities of the ministries on going and to be taken for achieving these Strategic Objectives

Gender in the National Budget of Bangladesh-MTBF In section-3, Poverty and Gender has been inserted in the BC-1, where ministries have to explain how by achieving these strategic objectives will benefit in terms of poverty reduction and women’s advancements Linkage among strategic objectives of ministries, their activities / programs and benefits in terms of poverty reduction and women advancement is established in section-3

Gender in the National Budget of Bangladesh-MTBF In BC-1 there is a format-4 where detailed list of projects of each ministries are provided. In filling out Section-3, linking is imperative with section-2 and format-4 In format-4 all MTBF ministries have to assign a percentage to all projects and activities according to the degree of their benefit on poverty reduction and women advancement. These information is analyzed and is published in the MTBF document along with the Budget. It is an effort to track what share of expenditure goes directly to reduce poverty and ensure women’s advancements

Gender in the National Budget of Bangladesh-MTBF As an integral part of BC-1, section-3, relating to Poverty and Gender, has to be filled in as a complete package without considering it as an isolated part Line Ministries, agencies and departments under line ministry are to prepare it in a coordinated manner Line Ministries are responsible for providing overall supervision to the agencies in completing section-3 Finance Division officials, responsible for concerned ministry and consultants are providing support – training and advise – to the line ministries

Gender in the National Budget of Bangladesh-RCGP In a separate initiative in August 2003 Ministry of Finance undertook an exercise to develop Recurrent, Capital, Gender and Poverty (RCGP) data base. This database application Model has been developed to improve the monitoring and reporting facility on financial resources allocated to reduce poverty and promote gender equity If there is no direct benefit for women expenditure for a project will indicate zero. If they are totally targeted to women they will be assigned 100 percent for women’s share. Other projects need to have a percentage between 1-99 percent

Gender in the National Budget of Bangladesh-RCGP Similarly for the recurrent budget all expenditure items are assigned a percentage to gender disaggregate them This provided the government with a rough estimate of public expenditure in gender disaggregated manner Qualitative guidelines for this purpose have been developer on the basis of which this disaggregation is done Reporting is made in MTBF on how much (share of total expenditure) is spent on women’s advancement

Gender in the National Budget of Bangladesh-Gender Report In FY2009-10, for the first time, the Finance Minister placed before the parliament an analysis on gender budgeting titled ‘Women’s Advancements and Rights’ along with the annual budget The first gender budgeting report was prepared for four ministries. These ministries were Ministry of Education,Health & Family Welfare, Social Welfare and Disaster Management

Gender in the National Budget of Bangladesh-Gender Report Gender Report addressed the following issues 1. Importance of the ministry’s activities in the context of development of the country 2. Analysis of the importance of the activities of the ministry for women’s advancement and rights 3. Identify the policies that guides the activities of the ministry and analyse pro-women aspects of the policies

Gender in the National Budget of Bangladesh-Gender Report 4. Undertakes gender disaggregated beneficiary assessment of the activities taken by a Ministry.In order to assess how successful the activities of the ministry are in addressing women’s advancement and rights issues three specific indicators were analysed Women in decision making in a Ministry Women as service providers in a Ministry Male-female beneficiaries of the activities of a Ministry

Gender in the National Budget of Bangladesh-Gender Report 5. Total allocation, development and revenue expenditure, and women’s share 6. Gender disaggregation of top ten highest spending projects

Challenges and threats Threats for the MTBF process The government officials generally tend to follow any format in a mechanical manner without giving much effort to improve the analysis They are often not willing to go the extra mill to get data and information to make this exercise more rigorous and meaningful MTBF ministry/division claims about having certain positive impacts on women’s advancement and rights however there is no real evidence of such claims

Challenges and threats Threats for the MTBF process It is not clear if gender analysis in MTBF is having any real influence on allocating funds in favour of benefiting women by design Reporting on gender disaggregated Key Performance Indicators are mainly absent because availability of gender disaggregate data is very difficult to find It is imperative to include women’s advancements and rights concerns in Rules of Business and Allocation of Business

Challenges and threats Threats for the RCGP model Present practice of ‘assign a percentage’ (especially in projects and programmes) is basically a guess work (although based on the best information available) and cannot be considered as accurate Every project completion report needs to be followed by a gender disaggregated beneficiary assessment The existing budget and accounts code classification is done at 13 digit level. In this classification gender disaggregation is not included in the data based

Challenges and threats Threats for the RCGP model Some of the items which have been identified as ‘gender neutral’ in the budget need to be reconsidered and reclassified Currently family pensions are assigned as 100 percent expenditure for men. This classification is wrong and accordingly the percentage allocated in this regard should also be revised It is necessary that the assumptions of particularly recurrent expenditure are revised every three to four years

Challenges and threats Threats to Gender Budget Report Analytical rigour of in the gender report is rather weak particularly for the non-social ministries. For that unavailability of gender disaggregated data at the implantation is a major reason Currently the gender budget report is dependent on consultant. In this regard some capacity has been developed within the Finance Division. However, special training programme should be designed, imparted and internalized in the Finance Division

That’s all for Today Thanks for your attention

Gender Responsive Budgeting in Bangladesh