Informal Economy Budget Analysis in Brazil, Pakistan, Peru and Philippines

This paper brings together the findings from four country papers on informal economy budget analysis commissioned by Women in the Informal Economy – Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO). The four country papers built on research done several years previously. The previous resesarch examined how budgets of national government, KwaZulu-Natal province and eThekwini (Durban) municipality in South Africa assisted or hindered different types of workers in the informal economy.

Informal economy budget analysis draws inspiration from gender-responsive budgeting initiatives and participatory budget initiatives. Gender-responsive budgeting initiatives take many forms and can involve diverse actors. However all the initiatives have the underlying question as to how government budgets differentially address the needs and interests of women and men, girls and boys. Participatory budget initiatives provide opportunities for ordinary citizens and/or representatives of organised groupings, to participate in decisionmaking around how government budgets are allocated. They can also involve citizens and group representatives in implementation and monitoring of projects for which budgets have been allocated. Informal economy budget analysis draws on gender-responsive budgeting in asking how government budgets address the needs and
interests of different groups of informal workers. It also investigates what opportunities exist for informal workers or their representatives to participate at different stages of the budget process.

Country papers were developed for Brazil, Pakistan, Peru and Philippines. Criteria for choosing countries were:
• WIEGO must have an affiliate in the country, or close links with an organisation that works with informal economy workers and that is interested in using the budget research in advocacy and organising.
• WIEGO, its affiliate or other contacts must be able to identify local researcher/s who can do the research. The researchers need not be budget experts, but must be comfortable with numbers and have some knowledge of government policies and about the informal economy. The researchers must be prepared to help the informal economy worker organisation understand what they have written.
• The country must ideally have some level of real decentralisation of functions and budgets to the subnational level.
• Budget information must be publicly available.

The country researchers who undertook the studies were Ana Paula Salej in Brazil, Khawar Mumtaz and Nadia Saleem in Pakistan, Lissette Aliaga Linares in Peru, and Florencia Casanova-Dorotan, assisted by Phoebe Cabanilla, Maria Corazon Tan and Maria Antonette Montemayor in Philippines.
Each country paper focused on two or three types of informal economy workers as case studies. In choosing these types, researchers were asked to give preference to home-based workers, street vendors and waste pickers as these three groups form the focus of WIEGO’s Inclusive Cities Project. Additional criteria included the number of this type of worker in the local economy, the extent to which the workers are organised and members of the WIEGO affiliate, and the proportion of the type of work that is female. In each country, the research covered all levels of government (national to local) in respect of functions that affect informal economy workers. To make the scope manageable and the information more specific, each paper focused on a single municipality or city and covered that municipality’s or city’s budget as well as the budgets of higher levels of government that include the municipality or city.

This composite paper has three aims. Firstly, it summarises the findings of the four country studies. Secondly, it describes the way in which the planning and budgeting processes in the four countries provide for public participation. Thirdly, it reflects on learnings from the experiences of and approaches used by the four researchers and how these might inform future attempts to conduct informal economy budget analysis.