Regional Development Councils

Ike Señeres

ACCORDING to the website of the National Economic Development Authority (Neda), “the Regional Development Council (RDC) is the highest planning and policy-making body in the region. It serves as the counterpart of the Neda Board at the sub-national level. It is the primary institution that coordinates and sets the direction of all economic and social development efforts in the region. It also serves as a forum where local efforts can be related and integrated with regional and national development activities.”

As I checked that website, I found out that only about seven out of 14 RDCs are submitting their accomplishment reports, an indication that the rest of the RDCs are either not operational or are remiss in their reportorial duties. As it usually happens, not too many would probably mind if the RDCs would report or not, but that could not care less attitude is changing now, because more and more people are becoming more interested in local governance. As I understand it, the RDCs are supposed to be the apex of a complete system of Local Development Councils (LDCs) that includes the Barangay Development Council (BDC), the Municipal Development Council (MDC) and the Provincial Development Council (PDC).

Maybe it’s just a question of semantics, but as I see it, the RDC being the local counterpart of the Neda Board at the sub-national level is not the same as being the apex of the LDCs. Perhaps it could be said that the regional office of the Neda is the same as the regional office of the Neda Board, but somehow the lines between the two should be well defined, so that the people would know which is which in terms of functions and responsibilities. Not that I would want to add to the confusion, but the Neda Board is not the same as the Neda Secretariat, the former being chaired by the President, and the latter by the Neda Director General who is also the Secretary of Socio-Economic Planning.

In theory, the data sets that are needed for development planning should be collected from below, and submitted all the way to the top where these should be compiled and analyzed. That is the reason why it could be said that the data sets that are collected by the BDCs should be submitted to the MDCs and going up, the data collected from the MDC should be submitted to the PDCs. Being the supposed apex of the LDCs, it is supposed to be the RDCs that should submit the data to the top, and that should be no other than the Neda Secretariat. That is how it is supposed to be, but it seems that it is not actually happening as it is supposed to be, more so that many RDCs are not submitting any data at all.

In reality, the same data sets that are collected for development planning should be the same data sets that should be used for Bottoms Up Budgeting (BUB), for obvious reasons. As a matter of fact, the Regional Development Plans (RDPs) as approved by the RDCs should also become the building blocks for the preparation of the Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP). In addition to that, the same data sets should be used for monitoring and reporting the status of regional compliance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN).

Following the usual and customary government rules, the RDCs should submit copies of their approved agendas and minutes of meetings along with their accomplishment reports. That does not seem to be the case however, and that is why there is suspicion that some agendas and minutes if ever submitted might have been fabricated, if and when no meetings were actually held. Looking at the accomplishment reports however, it is very obvious that the reported data sets are not structured, thus leading to another suspicion that there are actually no structured databases where these data sets should be uploaded to.

Either by design or by accident, the Neda is also the Secretariat of the Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council (Ledac) that is composed of the members of the Cabinet and the designated members of the Congress from both Houses. As it is supposed to be, the members of Congress could actually attend all the meetings of the LDCs, or send representatives to it if they could not attend. In theory therefore, it could be presumed that the members of Congress would be aware of the agendas and minutes of the LDCs. This awareness would therefore empower them to participate productively in the Ledac meetings, since they are the ones who are supposed to know the development situation in their own representations.

You can look at it any way you like, but it is hard to escape the fact that the Neda, acting as the Secretariat of the RDCs and acting as the Secretariat of the Ledac is the center of the universe of development planning, combining both the perspectives of the Legislative Branch and the Executive Branch. Of course we know that legislators are not running the government and executive officials are not making laws, but looking at the practical side, it would really be good if they could actively collaborate not only at the level of the RDCs, but also at the level of the Ledac. My wish however is for them to have interactive databases that they could use to make the intelligent decisions, using data collected from below.

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