Ken Abante

Ateneo de Manila University · Department of Interdisciplinary Studies

This policy analysis attempts to answer three questions: First, what is the extent of smuggling and customs tax evasion in the Philippines? Second, how can customs improve its risk management system in the short term to minimize officers’ discretion and improve trade facilitation without abdicating its other mandates of revenue generation and borde...

Coalition building has been discussed extensively in the fields of collective impact, social work, social change, multiparty negotiation and mediation, sociology and anthropology, economics, civil society, and state relations, among other fields, but there is scant literature on Filipino cases of local coalition-building practitioners who navigate...

This case study looks at the role of civil society in the sin tax reforms of 1997, 2012, and 2019: a story of how a broad coalition of leaders in civil society and government substantially raised excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol products to fund the country’s universal health care program. The coalition overcame the political influence of the ‘s...

Resilient procurement systems will ensure quality delivery of publicly funded bike lane projects which are critical to COVID-19 recovery, transport inflation management, and climate resiliency. We review P1 billion worth of nationally funded pop-up bike lane contracts from 2020 to 2021 and find that (i) bike lanes were procured at an average cost o...

With the support of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) as our development partner, we launched the Young Budget Leaders Program (YBLP) with our common dream for the budget advocacy — to have a next generation of leaders in civil society trained and empowered to engage the public democratic processes for the budgets that their communities deser...

Mobility advocates have multiple opportunities in 2023 to engage with the government to prioritize the development of road-based public transport in the Philippines. While rail projects are also needed over the long term, road-based public transport and active transport networks are necessary to improve the welfare and mobility of Filipinos over th...

Problem: The Philippines has a massive public transport crisis and shortage that forces people to crowd and risk getting infected with COVID-19, especially with the new variants. The shortage has contributed to our largest economic recession since the Second World War-as workers and frontliners struggle to get to work. The transport shortage and la...

One of the causes of the systemic shortage in public transport in the Philippines is that transport and infrastructure agencies measure success based on the movement of vehicles and not of people. Current success indicators emphasize the lengths of roads built and speeds of vehicles on those roads, rather than the ability of the transport system to...

Move As One Coalition urges economic managers: Act now to stop transport inflation Given that transport is the number-two contributor to inflation in May 2022, the Move As One Coalition recommends a ten-point agenda to lower the costs of transport for Filipino consumers, and safeguard our health and economic recovery. The transport sector is in a...

Mobility advocates can change the system of mobility in the Philippines by engaging the budget process. What needs to change is the inequity of car-centric public budgeting that has widened our public transport shortage and has made millions of people's commutes harder and more unsafe. From 2010 to 2021, a measly one percent of the country's P2.8 t...

This public letter puts forward the comments of the civil society group Tarabangan Kontra COVID-19 on the 2022 budget and annual investment plan of Naga City, Camarines Sur, Philippines. This public letter summarizes our comments in these hearings for consideration of the City Council. We recommend that the city council hold a special budget hearin...

Fiscal policy is key to health and recovery, but the national government has missed the opportunity to provide aid and stimulus--given the misguided priorities in the 2021 National Budget, the non-passage of Bayanihan 3, and the non-extension of Bayanihan 2. There is a need to reallocate fiscal space from non-urgent programs towards a mix of progra...

We reviewed and evaluated the 2020 Audited Financial Statements of Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corporation (the “Company”). In the course of our review, we have noted five (5) high-risk observations and one (1) medium-risk observation in relation to the contracts awarded to the Company by the Procurement Service-Department of Budget and Management (PS...

Civil society groups appeal to President Rodrigo R. Duterte, the country’s economic managers, and Senate and House leaders to stop passing the buck and urgently act on a two-step plan to fund social support for millions of Filipinos suffering through this pandemic.

Forty-eight (48) civil society groups and concerned citizens urge the three officials to call for a special session to extend Bayanihan 2 before it expires on June 30. Otherwise, more than Php18 billion in unused funds for critical coronavirus response programs for health, public transport, education, agriculture, tourism, labor, and social welfare...

The Philippines has a massive public transport shortage, made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic and the decision to tighten public transport supply in 2020. This shortage impeded efforts to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus and contributed to the country's worst postwar recession, as non-home-based workers found it much harder to move and go to wo...

The Philippines faces a massive public transport shortage made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. We studied Philippine government budget and audit documents over the past decade to understand how infrastructure and public transport budget priorities may have caused this shortage. We find that the national government has budgeted too much on roads and...

The coronavirus pandemic has tested the resilience of procurement systems around the world, as governments try to deliver critical public goods while mitigating the risks of relaxing procurement rules to cope with the demands of this emergency. What lessons might we learn from the experience of the Philippines? We construct and open for public use...

Data is considered one of the 21st century’s most valuable resources, that when transformed into insights and knowledge, can unleash powerful forces for the common good. Improving government data processes, from collection and organization to analysis and access, is key to harnessing the power of data for sustained impact. But open data does not n...

Public Hearing of the House Committee on Public Information on the Freedom of Information Bills on 7 April 2021 To aid in the public deliberation of the bills, we are honored to share with the Committee and publicly launch our WeSolve report: “Data for Empowerment: Organizing Principles for an Inclusive Public Data Ecosystem”, where we study use c...

The 2022 budget should be used to fill a Php150-billion gap in investments in road-based public transport, pedestrian, and cycling infrastructure. This shift will address the massive shortage in transport supply made worse by the pandemic. An overwhelming majority of Filipinos across age, sex, education, geography, and socioeconomic class support t...

This briefer outlines key guidelines from 10 national government policies and budget documents to support walking, cycling, and active transport in the Philippines. This briefer was written by members of Move As One Coalition, a broad coalition of more than 140 organizations and 77,000 individual petition signatories fighting for a safe, humane, a...

Move As One is a civil society coalition of more than 140 organizations and 77,000 individuals advocating for a safer, more humane, and inclusive transportation system in the Philippines. We are a group of transport workers, commuters, persons with disabilities, health care workers, cyclists, laborers, youth, transport economists, public policy res...

Investing in public transport will save lives and restart the economy. But the government's priority programs for road-based public transport receive near-zero funding under the proposed 2021 National Expenditure Program. We estimate that we will need P62 billion to fund these IATF-priority programs under the Department of Transportation’s (DOTr) 2...

Restart Micro Enterprises (RestartME) compiled a list of digital solutions that microfinance institutions (MFIs) can utilize as they recover and transition from the industry shift caused by the coronavirus pandemic. RestartME recommends that this briefer be used by MFIs to determine which digital solutions they can integrate to their operations as...

Restart Micro Enterprises Inc (RestartME) created a briefer mapping the status of areas and economic sectors under the Enhanced, Modified Enhanced, General, and Modified General Community Quarantine from 1 - 15 June 2020. Now that microfinance institutions and credit cooperatives are now allowed to operate in all 4 quarantine status (ECQ, MECQ, GCQ...

Restart Micro Enterprises Inc (RestartME) created a briefer mapping the status of areas and economic sectors under the Enhanced, Modified Enhanced, General, and Modified General Community Quarantine. Now that microfinance institutions and credit cooperatives are now allowed to operate in all 4 quarantine status (ECQ, MECQ, GCQ, and MGCQ), Restart...

Restart Micro Enterprises (RestartME) created a briefer mapping the status of areas and sectors under the General and Enhanced Community Quarantine. We recommend that this briefer be distributed to microfinance institutions and their clients as a working guide of how they can adjust their operations depending on their area’s community quarantine...

Restart Micro Enterprises (RestartME) compiled a list of government programs that microfinance institutions (MFIs) and their clients can refer to. The briefer is in Filipino to make it easier for clients to understand. Disclaimer: Information may change over time as government agencies update their rules. Constructive criticism welcome via hyabe...

Restart Micro Enterprises (RestartME) compiled a list of government loan assistance and financing options for microfinance institutions (MFIs). This is different from the first advisory which focused on individual assistance. Constructive criticism welcome via hyabendana@gmail.com, kabante@ateneo.edu, and aikarobredo@restartme.ph.

We update our regular report on the COVID-19 budget of the Philippines as of 17 April 2020. We discuss the budget process as watering a garden. For the outputs and indicators, we ask: Do we see signs of our garden growing? For sources of financing we ask: Do we have enough water in our wells? For expenditures, we ask: How much water have we spent?...

Birth registration is so critical to eradicating extreme poverty that is considered a key success indicator for the sixteenth sustainable development goal on promoting peaceful and inclusive societies and providing access to justice for all. But globally, one in every four, or 166 million children under the age of five are unregistered, according t...

The #COVID19PH Citizens' Budget Tracker is a community effort to bit.ly/holdpowertoaccount. This is our running assessment of the COVID19 Budget as of 6 April 2020. First we describe the budget process as watering a garden. To discuss sources of financing, we ask: Do we have enough water? To discuss social amelioration, we ask: How can we watch our...

I organize, clean, and upload an open data set (bit.ly/phlcustomsopendata) of more than twenty million import transactions from 2012 to 2019, currently published as publicly available excel spreadsheets on the Philippine Bureau of Customs website (http://customs.gov.ph/import-reports/). I find that the aggregates of this data release have some disc...

Presentation of my second year policy analysis from the Master in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) Program at Harvard Kennedy School, during the 57th Annual Conference of the Philippine Economic Society. What is the extent of smuggling in the Philippines? I find that from 2012 to 2017, the level of underinvoicing in the...