Budgeting Process Assistance

The activity is designed as an effort to build community capacity in budgeting process (Planning – budgeting – implementing – evaluating – monitoring), particularly to encourage women to get involve actively in the budgeting process. It is carried out to help women to voice out their needs and their problems so it may included in the budget allocation in the province of South Sumatera. The assistance will be done for civil society, executives and legislatives in South Sumatera province. The activity will be conducted by WRI, in collaboration with local partners, i.e. the executives, legislatives, and NGOs.

 

Assistance for Executive, Legislative and NGO

At the executive, legislative, and NGO level, the assistance done by conducting meetings and discussions to encourage the socialization of gender budgeting in South Sumatera province. Moreover, there will be discussions held intensively with executives, legislatives, NGOs, and some experts to assist the process of budget allocation and policy using gender perspective.

 

Aims:

1. To assist multi-stakeholders (executives, legislatives, and NGOs) to draft some strategies for gender budgeting advocacy.
2. To encourage executives and legislatives to be committed to implementing policies and gender budgeting.
3. To make an effort to implement gender budgeting.
4. To identify problems and needs of women related to reproductive health and provide recommendations to used gender perspective in Regional Revenues and Expenditures Budget (APBD) allocation in South Sumatera province

 

The most important findings/outcomes

1. The awareness of using gender perspective in budget allocation start to develop in the province of South Sumatera.
2. Commitment from the legislative to integrate gender perspective by inviting the FGD’s participants to be participated in the coming budget process meeting (October 2008). 

 

As quoted from Ms Fatimah Rais statement (deputy of the local parliament of the South Sumatera’s province): 

“Next month we are planning to discuss the Additional Budget (ABT) so we had the possibility to revise or increase the budget. In October we are starting our work to plan the budget for the fiscal year of 2009. If, the training may be conducted before this schedule I can guarantee that the budget allocation process using gender perspective can be use for the planning process. This training may help us to understand the gender budgeting process”.

 

3. Commitment from the executive to use gender perspective to their program planning. Below are some of the plans that the executive (District Planning Office and District Health Office) stated during the Seminar and the FGD:

• Monitor the bottom up planning procedure, so women can really be participated in the Musrenbang process from the village up to the Province level.
• Enhancing the existing regulation, i.e. Presidential Instruction no. 9/2000 and Internal Affairs Minister Decision no. 132/2003, so the executive can apply gender perspective in the process of budget allocation.
• Using the Routine Budget to increase the capacity of civil servants on Gender Mainstreaming
• Increase the Development Budget in the province of South Sumatera by advocating the importance to use the budget more effectively to improve the condition of the poor, particularly women.
• Integrate women’s needs and interest in the planning documents, i.e. Renstra, RDJMD, RPJD, RKPD.
• Collaborate with the local parliament members to visit the villages to gather inputs from women.

 

Conclusions and Recommendations in Priority Order

• Assistance/Socialization, through seminar and discussions is needed, particularly for the executive and the legislative in allocating budget using gender perspective.
• Training for multi-stakeholders, including District Planning Office in the province of South Sumatera is needed to learn how to use gender perspective in analyzing and planning programs and budgeting.

Project Description, Methodology and Implementation

 

1. Seminar

“Peluang & Tantangan Anggaran Berkeadilan Gender dalam Penganggaran APBD Sumatera Selatan (Opportunities & Challenge to Implement Gender Responsive Budget in the Local Budget of South Sumatera Province)”

 

Aims:

The seminar is conducted in order to socialize gender responsive budget or analyzing the local budget (APBD) using gender analysis framework and identify the opportunities to integrate gender analysis framework in the development planning and budgeting of the women’s reproductive health budget in the South Sumatera Province.

 

Activities:

1. The seminar “Peluang & Tantangan Anggaran Berkeadilan Gender dalam Penganggaran APBD Sumatera Selatan (Opportunities & Challenge to Implement Gender Responsive Budget in the Local Budget of South Sumatera Province)” was conducted in 13 May 2008 at Hotel Duta, Palembang – South Sumatera.
2. Collaborate with the local partner, Puspa Indonesia, to organize the seminar.
3. The participants of the seminar were 72 people (the target was 75 people), 53 women and 19 men, from various backgrounds i.e. the executive, NGOs, university, journalist/media and civil society.

2. Focus Group Discussion (FGD)

 

Aims:

The FGD aims to identify the gender issues and knowledge on gender responsive budget with regards to women’s reproductive health budget among the executive, particularly from the District Planning Office and the District Health Office and the legislative, particularly the Commission of Budget in the province of South Sumatera.

 

Activities:

1. The FGD conducted on 7 July 2008 at Sri Melayu Restaurant, Palembang, South Sumatera.
2. Collaborate with the local partner, Puspa Indonesia, to organize the FGD with the support of the South Sumatera’s Parliament Forum and the South Sumatera UNFPA.
3. The participants of the FGD from the executive were 10 participants (8 men and 2 women) and 8 participants from the legislative (7 men and 1 women).
4. The FGD started by discussing the understanding of the concept of gender responsive budget, the gender issues based on the experience and perception of the participants and conclusion as well as follow up that can be done by the participants regarding gender responsive budget at the executive and legislative level.

3. Conclusions include Next Steps and Recommendations

Lessons Learned from the Seminar

1. The issue of gender responsive budget was still quite new in the province of South Sumatera. Through the discussion in the seminar it can be seen that the participants started to understand the concept of gender budget.
2. Previously, the participants still consider the concept of gender as the same as women. Thus, gender responsive budget only consider the budget of women.
3. At the end of the seminar, most of the participants propose the need of gender responsive budget training to build their capacity in implementing gender budget program.

 

Lessons Learned from the FGD

1. Based on the FGD, it was seen that the level of understanding the gender responsive budget concept still low. Most of the participants still can not see that most of the programs planned in the local budget were gender neutral.
2. However, at the end of the FGD the head of the District Planning Office and the head of the sub division of Family Health from the District Health Office as well as the head of the Commission of Budget of the Local Parliament have committed to participate in the gender budget training to equip them in implementing gender budget program in the province of South Sumatera for the fiscal year 2008 – 2009.

 

Conclusions

Referring to the implementation of the Seminar and FGD activities, the multi-stakeholders in the province of South Sumatera need to have more frequent socialization activities on the concept of gender responsive budget, moreover training on the aforementioned concept to build their capacity. ***