POLICY BRIEF Gender Analysis of the Ministry of Gender, Children, Disability and Social Welfare Budgets, 2009-2015 A call for equal and meaningful distribution of the National Cake October 2015
The Ministry of Gender, Children, Disability and Social Welfare (MoGCDSW) is the lead agency and policy-holder in gender mainstreaming. It has to coordinate national efforts to ensure that gender is mainstreamed at all levels as a way of addressing poor development indicators that are hindering development. Malawi has commendably recognized gender equality as an important catalyst for accelerating development. This has been acknowledged under the Constitution, gender related laws, international and regional commitments, the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS) II, and budgeting guidelines that are issued by the Ministry of Finance. However, MoGCDSW s budget trends over a five year period demonstrate that the Ministry is unable to effectively support gender mainstreaming efforts in national planning and development due to prevailing budgeting weaknesses, namely: very low operational expenses; high dependency on donors; little investments in economic empowerment and youth development; lack of resources and coherency to effectively implement gender related laws; negligible funding for gender at district level; lack of resources for meaningful coordination of sectoral gender mainstreaming; non-compliance with budgeting guidelines that mandate gender responsive budgeting; routine cuts in budget allocations; and funding disbursement that misalign with planning. 1. Introduction This policy brief presents findings of the budget analysis for the Ministry of Gender, Children, Disability and Social Welfare (MoGCDSW). It emerges from a study that was commissioned by the UN Women Malawi to analyze trends from 2009/2010 to 2014/15 in budget allocations for MoGCDSW both at National and Local Government levels. The study focused on establishing evidence on the exact state of the Ministry s funding; how funding supports its gender coordination role; and how it reinforces the implementation of gender related laws, polices and programmes. It is hoped that these findings will contribute towards consistent and increased allocation of resources to the MoGCDSW to strengthen the Ministry s programming and capacity development processes. This is in turn is one prerequisite for Malawi to uphold and fulfil its range of commitments towards gender equality and women s empowerment. 2. What is Gender Responsive Budgeting? Gender responsive budgeting (GRB) is an approach designed to mainstream gender dimension into all stages of the budget cycle through analyzing the different impacts of national and local budget allocations, expenditures and revenue policies on women and girls, and men and boys. It makes economic sense to adopt GRB because this is an effective and efficient mechanism to ensure that limited resources have maximum impact by targeting resources towards removing barriers that obstruct the full potential of all segments of the population, across all sectors. GRB also helps in reprioritizing of expenditures and revenue collection, taking into account the different needs, opportunities and challenges of women and men, girls and boys. By institutionalizing GRB, government budgets are planned, approved, executed, monitored and audited for the most cost-efficient use of public funds to promote development. 3. Analysis of MoGCDSW s budgets and corresponding policy findings a. MoGCDSW has largely been underprovided in terms of financial resources, with annual provisions being mostly below the MGDS II minimum requirement. Table 1 shows that the Ministry s budget has mostly been receiving less than 1% of the total national share. Overall, allocations for the past five years have been sporadic at best, and decreasing at worst. Increases in budget allocations (e.g. between the 2011/12 and 2012/13 financial years from MK1.7 billion to MK10 billion) have largely been due to increases in 2
resources for the Social Cash Transfer Programme (social welfare), which has some, albeit limited, contribution towards empowerment. In the 2015/16 FY, the Ministry is receiving a mere 0.35% (K3.22 billion) of the total national budget which is a further decrease to the 2014/15 allocation (0.7%). Table 1: Yearly trends of the share/proportion of the Ministry s budget (MK) Component 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 MK'000,000 National Budget 256,769.0 294,784.0 303,724.0 408,391.0 638,151.0 742,753.0 Ministry Of Gender 681.68 617.62 1,675.87 10,033.33 4,756.07 5,381.04 Ministry Budget share as % of National budget Recommended Budgetary share for child, youth development and empowerment as % of National budget under MGDS II 0.3 0.2 0.6 2.5 0.7 0.7-0.8 1.2 1.1 1.1 1.4 b. The Ministry s budget towards operations is low, but high towards salaries According to Figure 1, resource distribution between Other Recurrent Transactions (ORT) and Personal Emoluments (PE) within MoGCDSW has been highly skewed towards PE. Figure 1: Proportions of the MoGCDSW s PE, ORT & Development budgets, 2009-2015 The negligible ORT budget reduces the availability of operational resources for the Ministry, thus hindering important services like policy coordination and direction, supervision, monitoring of programmes implementation and technical backstopping services, among others. c. The Ministry s resources are being increasingly dominated by development budget which are heavily donor funded Figure 1 above shows that for the years under review, in particular 2009/10 and 2010/11, the development budget was around 35% and 28% (respectively) of the total Ministry s budget. According to Figure 2, from 2011 to 2014, the Ministry s budget was particularly dominated by the development budget. For instance, in the 2012/13 FY the development budget constituted about 91% of the total Ministry s budget. The increase in resources for the development budget 3
means that the investment resource package for the Ministry is growing, which is good for improving service delivery. However, of great concern is the fact that the ministry s budget is largely financed by donors. For example, in 2011/12, 2012/13, 2013/14 and 2014/15, the share of donor funds to the total ministry s budget was 53%, 91%, 63% and 68%, respectively. This over reliance on donor funding is not healthy as donor support is limited and generally activities respond to donor interests (and usually in selected areas), there is a risk that the Ministry s priorities may not be fully addressed and most areas of the country may be starved of strategic gender services. Figure 2: Donor funds in MOCDSW, 2009-2015 (%) Furthermore, the level of donor financing varies considerably yearly, for instance, in 2010/11 there was no indication of donor sourced finances under Development budget (Part 1); the reasons for lack of donor contribution towards the ministry s budget are not documented in the budget books or budget statement. Therefore, this overreliance on the donor contributions has a potential to negatively affect matters of sustainability for gender, children, disability and social welfare programmes. d. Departmental allocations show that spending priority is towards social welfare services and administrative expenses, and less on economic empowerment and youth development Table 2 indicates that social welfare services have dominated resource allocation to the Ministry for the years under review. Administrative expenses received the second highest allocation. Economic empowerment and youth development services components received significantly lower allocations. From most of the years under review, social protection services, Complimentary Basic Education and vocational training have not been allocated ORT resources. 4
Table 2: ORT by MoGCDSW s functions, 2009-2015 ORT functional allocations, 2009-2014 ORT by the Ministry's functions 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 MK'000,000 Pre-Primary and Primary Education 0.0 1.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 80.5 Youth Development Services 41.6 34.7 32.5 33.7 43.3 41.6 Economic Empowerment 10.0 20.3 49.2 48.8 38.9 42.2 Social Welfare Services 480.3 244.0 319.4 349.0 525.8 832.1 Administration Expenses 145.3 132.1 156.1 153.8 248.2 338.3 Social Protection Services 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 80.5 Complementary Basic Education 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 134.0 48.0 Vocational Training 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 29.0 Other 4.5 12.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 Total 681.7 444.6 557.2 585.2 990.1 1492.2 Source: Computed from government budget documents 2009-2014 All the functions that are under-resourced have a direct bearing on the social and economic empowerment of women and girls, which is essential if they are to fully develop as key actors in national development. e. Malawi has passed important gender-related laws that require investments if they are to positively change lives in practice Table 3 shows that serious and organized efforts in implementing meaningful actions aimed at implementing gender-related laws that have been passed since 2006 are yet to commence. Table 3: State of implementation of gender related laws Prevention of Domestic Violence There have not been visible implementation actions for the past Act, 2006 six years in the Ministry s budget or that of related institutions like the Judiciary. Child Care, Justice and Protection Act, 2010 Deceased Estates (Wills and Inheritance) Act, 2011 Disability Act, 2012 Gender Equality Act, 2013 Budgets of 2009/10 and partly 2010/11 have some actions relating to child protection workers, juveniles, bursaries etc. However, most activities existed before the enactment of the Act. Budgets for gender specific interventions related to the Act are not visible. The budgets do not display specific implementation activities. There is inclusion of few activities starting from the 2012/13 e.g. training of disability desk officers and virtually impaired students. However, the activities are inadequate to realize full implementation of the law. The only area that is reflected in the Ministry s budget is the fight against harmful cultural practices. The failure to prioritize the implementation of the above laws in the budget prolongs the challenge of low access to justice, particularly by women and girls. For the actions that are being implemented, the targets are mostly too few to make impact, and usually not carefully focused on how the Ministry can systematically facilitate the implementation of all key provisions. Malawi has also passed the Trafficking In Persons Act No. 3 of 2015 and the Marriage, Divorce 5
and Family Relations Act No. 4 of 2015. These must also receive budget allocations in order to be effectively implemented. f. Investments towards gender at district level are low compared to other sectors Mirroring the image of the parent ministry, the proportion of resources towards the gender sector against key sectoral provisions at district council level is negligible. For the period under review, the maximum that has been allocated for gender at council level is 2.4% of the total MoGCDSW s vote in 2014/15 FY. The allocation was 0.7 and 1.2% in 2012/13 FY and 2013/14 FY respectively. Yet, district councils could be seen as the epicenter of the coordination of gender mainstreaming activities since this is where sectors directly offer services to the majority of Malawi s population residing in rural areas. g. Coordination activities do not get the prominence they deserve in MoGCDSW s budget MoGCDSW s budget lacks serious coordination activities to demonstrate its authority and duty to coordinate gender mainstreaming activities across sectors. The absence of targets even for the few coordination activities included in the budgets reflects non-compliance with principles of performance based budgeting. h. MoGCDSW has not exemplified compliance to GRB budgeting guidelines This is evidenced by the absence of outputs and activities that meaningfully impact on the improvement of the status of women, children and people with disabilities, coupled with the absence of sex-disaggregated data for most of the output targets. i. Treasury does not routinely make full disbursements, and timeliness of monthly funding is unpredictable Treasury fails to disburse all the funding to the Ministry and its establishment in accordance with the approved budget. As for the timeliness of funding, the disbursement of funds varies considerably across quarters, with overfunding and underfunding being the status quo. Such situations need to be avoided since unplanned resources may be used inefficiently, leading to poor implementation of subsequent underfunded activities. There have at times been over 30% underfunding cuts. In 2013/14, cost centres like the Ministry headquarters got as low as around 60% of its total approved allocation. The Disability Department was the worst affected at around 50%. The failure by Treasury to disburse all the funding affects the achievement of planned targets, especially for the disability department, which has few alternative sources of funding. 6
4. Recommendations a) Seriously invest in the lead agency and policy-holder since gender is the missing link in meeting global and national development goals: Without adequate human and financial capacity, it will not be possible for the MoGCDSW to support the government in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals. This is crucial for development, bearing in mind that all four Millennium Development Goals that Malawi failed to achieve have clear gender connotations. Lack of adequate funding affects the capacity of the Ministry to: Smoothly coordinate all MDAs and NGOs to ensure that their development interventions effectively promote equal access to goods and services for men and women; boys and girls in line with national priorities; Monitor the implementation of gender mainstreaming interventions within MDAs, and to report progress on national gender indicators and priorities; Support the building of technical capacity in gender mainstreaming within MDAs where necessary; Ensure that gender related laws are being implemented fully within the context of a well-coordinated national response. b) Domestic resources and disbursements have to be seen to match government s commitment towards gender equality: The large proportion of donor funding contradicts national and international commitments of the government to spearhead the promotion of gender equality and women s empowerment. Treasury should reciprocate donor efforts by meaningfully increasing counterpart funding (Part II) allocations, that is, government s own contribution to complement donor resources. Thus Treasury should guarantee minimum levels of resource provision for MoGCDSW, translating into a nominal increase in the provisions to the Ministry whenever the national budget nominally increases. Further, Treasury should strictly observe disbursements plans from the Ministry and disburse funds in appropriate amounts at the right times in order to maximize the efficient use of scarce resources. c) Operational expenses are crucial for coordinating gender mainstreaming and should be adequate: Treasury needs to review the ORT ceilings to ensure that funds for doing work on the ground and leading to tangible gender equality results across MDAs are consistently available. Parliament, MoGCDSW, and Ministry of Finance should support efforts to increase district council allocations towards gender programming in order to enable the sector to coordinate and spearhead the implementation of gender related interventions on the ground. d) High impact programmes towards empowerment should be prioritized: To improve efficiency in resource allocation, MoGCDSW needs to review the recurrent budget and meaningfully provide for the underprovided programmes that have notable impact on women and girls, including youth development and economic empowerment. The Ministry should ensure that subsequent work-plans and budgets are addressing noted shortfalls related to coordinating activities. e) Build capacity for gender responsive budgeting: In order to make progress in efficiently using resources to address true priorities and needs of men and women through various sectors, Parliament and the Ministry of Finance need sufficient skills to analyze the relevance of budgets to the priorities of women and girls, and men and boys in different sectors. MoGCDSW also 7
requires the skills to generate gender responsive budgets and lead by example; including developing strategic actions to support the consistent implementation of gender related laws once they are passed. This should be accompanied with systematic efforts in building capacities of implementing partners and other MDAs for meaningful multi-stakeholder impact. f) Develop resource mobilization strategy: In view of the dwindling government resources towards the implementation of gender, child and disability programmes, MoGCDSW, UN Women and stakeholders should develop a comprehensive resource mobilization strategy with the aim of increasing a resource base for the sector. The strategy would harmonize the fragmented pieces of resource mobilization efforts by various institutions in the sector. g) Strengthen coordination structures: MoGCDSW, UN Women and other stakeholders in the sector should revive and strengthen various Technical Working Groups and other development community structures at all levels so that they can be used to facilitate the systematic implementation of the national gender response, including gender responsive budgeting. h) Clearly define and mobilize support around gender equality national priorities that align with the overarching national policy framework: MoGCDSW should take leadership in ensuring that medium term gender programming is in alignment with national commitments as set out in the overarching national development framework. All partners and donors should comply with national priorities of the moment in order to consolidate efforts towards a common medium term vision for achieving gender equality. In this regard, there is need to carefully develop and implement a plan for implementing gender commitments in the MGDS II successor. The need for a National Gender Policy that will form the policy-foundation of the new national development strategy cannot be overemphasized. Contact Us: Representative, UN Women Malawi, Evelyn Court, Area 13, P.O. Box 31774, Lilongwe 3, Malawi 8