Privatization and development effectiveness

In his State of the Nation Address (SONA) last Monday, President Benigno Aquino 3rd laid down his plan to engage in more public-private partnerships to build roads and bridges, enhance our Navy, build agricultural facilities and fund his plans for reforms in education, health and other social services. His panacea seems to be hinged upon the privatization of basic social services and infrastructure development which has historically resulted in many of the problems that we as consumers are facing right now: ever increasing rates in electricity, water and other basic services.

Take, for example, the recent water debacle in the Metro last week. After twelve years of privatized water distribution, it seems that the water concessionaires have yet to start fixing the problematic systems loss (termed as “non-revenue water”) of the West zone. The West zone area has been losing more than half of the water flowing through its pipes. And although the East zone’s systems loss rate is lower, it still spills around 15 percent of its water.

Angat dam’s low water levels would not have been worrisome if Maynilad had fixed its leaking pipes early on. To add to the problem, the planned privatization of the Angat hydroelectric plant would complicate the allocation of the water coming in to Metro Manila since the power plant could prioritize power generation rather than public water services. The former is already one of the problems that the DPWH was pointing to as the cause of the low water level in Angat.

Other water sources such as the planned Laiban dam, the Wawa dam, and even Laguna Lake are now being eyed as potential revenue sources for the government once they start selling the rights to these sources. It is not only in Metro Manila where privatization is going full speed ahead. Many local water utilities are being taken over by large corporations under the guise of modernization and making them more efficient. Usually, these happen in exchange for increased water rates to be shouldered by consumers.

The privatization of utilities ranging from water, power, oil, trains, roads, tollways to our cell phones have only resulted in increases in the rates for these utilities. Consumers are made to pay for the losses of these private companies such as non-revenue water, systems loss, and foreign exchange losses.

We have long battled against the privatization of these public utilities since the time of the first Aquino presidency, where the move to sell these basic utilities were part of the loan deals of the IMF and the World Bank.

A government truly desirous of ensuring the welfare of its people should be the one to build these infrastructures and create services that will make our day-to-day activities easier. Letting private companies handle these services is problematic when it is profit that motivates them in the first place. We have to see how Aquino 3rd will handle problems that will arise—such as increasing rates and inefficient services—once his administration embarks on a new wave of privatization.

Development effectiveness

For three days in a row, various civil society organizations ranging from networks, community based organizations, social movements, trade unions, environmental advocates, urban poor groups, womens organizations and faith-based organizations have been meeting and discussing the concept of development effectiveness. Spearheaded by the Council for People’s Development and Governance (CPDG) in cooperation with other networks, the meeting is a broad and inclusive discussion and consensus-building process on how civil society organizations (CSOs) view development effectiveness.

This initiative came out of the worldwide dialogues that centered on the Paris Declaration with donors and governments, which tackled aid effectiveness. In these talks, CSOs have consistently pushed for their recognition as development actors in their own right. This was not immediately obvious to all stakeholders. It was only in 2008 when CSOs, governments and donors agreed on proposals to strengthen aid effectiveness through the inclusion of CSOs as independent development actors.

In their decades-long practice of delivering services to far-flung communities, CSOs are in reality concerned not just about aid effectiveness but more so on development effectiveness—how do the actions of development actors impact on improving the lives of the poor and marginalized; and the promotion of sustainable positive change that addresses, within a democratic framework, the root causes as well as the symptoms of poverty, inequality and marginalization.

It is in this light that the international process of coming up with a global development effectiveness framework and enabling environment for CSOs is being undertaken by the Open Forum for CSO Development. The Open Forum in the Philippines is now on its third day where CSOs will share their concept of development effectiveness in the multi-stake-holders dialogue with donors and government representatives.

Dr. Tapang is the chairman of the Advocates of Science and Technology for the People or AGHAM. He also currently chairs the CPDG.

Prom.bound@gmail.com –GIOVANNI TAPANG, Ph.D., manila times