Reason for existence of government

Last Monday, Sept, 29, I was one of four speakers in the Opening Plenary of the “12th Monitoring and Evaluation Network Forum” organized by the Department of Economy, Planning and Development (DEPDev) held at Crowne Plaza Manila Galleria. The previous name was NEDA, renamed and restructured under RA 12145 or the “Economy, Planning and Development Act of 2025.”

- BIENVENIDO S. OPLAS JR.

DEPDev Secretary Arsenio Balisacan gave the opening remarks and he emphasized the important role of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) to see whether government projects, programs and commitments are met or not, whether resources are used wisely or not, whether the people really benefited from those programs or not.

My co-speakers in the opening plenary panel with the theme, “To retain, redesign or retrench?” were DEPDev Undersecretary Joseph Capuno, DBM director Mary Joy de Leon and ADB principal economist Ashish Narain. I represented the perspective of civil society as the president of Minimal Government Thinkers advocating less government, less taxes. Moderator was UP School of Economics (UPSE) Prof. Karl Jandoc. Big crowd in the grand ballroom, participants mostly from different government agencies, national and regional offices.

After asking the three co-speakers, Karl asked my view as an advocate of minimal government about DEPDev’s mandate to use evaluation results. I replied that DEPDev as the main M&E agency of the Executive branch (Section 4 of RA 12145) should remind all other agencies of two principles.

One, the Principle of Subsidiarity — functions that can be done by local governments should not be assigned to national government, and functions that can be done by civil society or voluntary organizations and individuals themselves should not be assigned to government, national or local.