Sadly, DepDev looks all set to be another economic planning agency needing teeth.
A few weeks ago, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed into law a bill replacing the National Economic and Development Authority with the Department of Economic Planning and Development (DepDev) and revising the structure of the national economic planning agency.
DepDev is the second change in the structure and composition of the national economic planning agency since economic planning became accepted, in the Commonwealth era, as a necessary governmental function. The original agency – the National Economic Council (NEC) – was run by a board composed of a chairman and an equal number of representatives of the government and the private sector.
In one of his first martial-law decrees, President Ferdinand Marcos in 1973 replaced NEC with NEDA, which was now a full-blown Cabinet department with President Marcos as the chairman and with the entire Cabinet composing the new department’s board. The strongest opposition to the new set-up came from those who questioned the inclusion in the NEDA board of Cabinet members whose statutory functions had little or nothing to do with economic planning. This position was countered by the argument that economic planning was a national undertaking and therefore needed to be approached on all-of-government basis.
With the establishment of DepDev, national economic planning has been restored to its former status as an independent institution performing specialized work. DepDev’s head is the Secretary of Economic Planning and Development and its leadership structure is the same as that of any other Cabinet department.
The news of the replacement of NEDA by DepDev was received with little interest by the Filipino people. Except for one or two columnists who speculated on the significance of the change for the leadership of government’s economic management tea, the people of this country generally gave scant attention to the administrative change that had just taken place.
That was not surprising, for, despite its commanding sound, economic planning has yet to be accorded the same popular deference as other government activities related to management of the economy. Filipinos generally don’t take as much notice of things related to NEDA as they do of things related to the Department of Finance bureaus, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas on the Department of Trade and Industry. Most Filipinos appear to think of the economic-planning community as a group of people who push pencils to produce beautiful multi-year economic plans and blueprints that are quickly ignored by this county’s political power centers.
This apparently widespread impression is highly regrettable because every society, democratic or totalitarian, must have planning of the utilization of its resource and the distribution of the gross domestic product (GDP).
The key difference between economic planning in a totalitarian society and economic planning in a democratic society is, of course, that in a totalitarian society economic planning and GDP distribution are done by the same people. In a democratic society, on the other hand, economic planning is done by one group of people – DepDev in this country – and GDP distribution is done by other groups of people. The economic planners all too often see their plans and blueprints perverted to suit the political power centers or go totally unimplemented. They end up like eunuchs in a potentate’s harem.
Ideally, the head of the national economic planning authority should be the primus inter pares in a government’s economic management team. In this country it historically has been the head of the Department of Finance by virtue of its being the collector of the nation’s revenues. Operating in tandem with the Department of Budget and Management, the Department of Finance is the economic manager of the government. Like NEDA before it, DepDev will largely be on the outside looking in.
In some countries other Department/Ministry of Finance is not the primus inter pares of the government’s economic management team. The Japanese government for instance, has resolved the supremacy issue by making the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) a powerful institution. MITI has the biggest say on all issues involving investment, industry and trade.
The ideal situation, it bears repeating, is that the national economic planning agency not be a toothless tiger. Sadly, DepDev looks all set to be another economic planning agency needing teeth.
If the Filipino people haven’t been excited by the replacement of NEDA by DepDev, it must be because they regard that change as a case of “Same dog, new collar” (with all due respect to my friends in the canine world, of whom I am very fond). (llagasjessa@yahoo.com)
