LEGAZPI CITY—Albay will be one of the first provinces to implement the barangay-level Bottom-up Budgeting scheme, the provincial government said.
BuB is a “revolutionary good governance strategy at the grassroots level involving barangays and accredited civil society organizations [CSO] and direct transfer of resources from the national government down to its most basic unit.”
The Barangay BuB entails the direct participation of the Sangguniang Barangay and CSOs in assessing their communities, identifying and planning projects that will best address their needs, and monitoring the implementation of their development programs, funded by resources directly released to the barangays by the national government.
All of Albay’s 720 barangays would be part of the first batch of recipients of the direct government funding, set for release in 2017.
This first group, composed of some 12,000 barangays in the entire country, will each receive from P500,000 to P1 million depending on their program undertakings.
It was launched recently in Albay via a consultative conference attended by Department of Budget and Management Secretary Florencio Abad, Department of Interior and Local Government top officials, Albay Gov. Joey Salceda and local officials including 232 barangay captains from the province’s second district.
Based on the BuB handbook, the projects eligible for funding are those related to Basic Facilities and Services under Sec. 17 (b) of the Local Government Code, and Disaster Risk Reduction and Management, on which Albay has excelled.