The bicameral conference committee of the Senate and the House of Representatives has approved a bill seeking to institutionalize the Seal of Good Local Governance, an incentive program meant to encourage local government units to reach for high standards of governance.
Senator Juan Edgardo Angara, chairman of the Senate Committee on Local Government and sponsor of the bill in the upper chamber, said the measure sought to promote good public administration among LGUs and improve their delivery of basic services to their constituencies.
Since its inception in 2014, Angara said the SGLG program had pushed many provinces, cities, municipalities and barangays to operate “more efficiently, more effectively, and with more transparency and accountability.”
“This noble program should be immortalized and enshrined as law of the land because it encourages LGUs to take on greater challenges and perform better in pursuing the general welfare of their constituencies and in enforcing existing laws,” Angara said.
The bill will be sent to the Senate and the House of Representatives for ratification once all the members of the bicameral panel have signed the committee report. Once ratified, the bill will be transmitted to Malacañang for President Durterte’s signature.
The SGLG is the result of two pioneering programs of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) in 2010: Seal of Good Housekeeping (SGH) and the Performance Challenge Fund (PCF).
Under these programs, LGUs that successfully implemented “good financial housekeeping and full disclosure policies” in accordance with the rules and regulations of the Commission on Audit, are provided with a performance-based grant which they could use to supplement funding for local development projects.
Each SGH recipient is entitled to a cash grant—P1 million for municipality, P3 million for city, and P7 million for province—from the PCF for a project approved by the DILG.
