PHASE 2: THE DEVELOPMENT OF COSTED POLICY OPTIONS (December 2014)

In December, the technical working group organized national dialogue workshops with 200 provincial INAS and MGCAS delegates, national Government representatives, civil society organizations and development partners to: develop a common framework of analysis of vulnerability, broaden thinking about the role of basic social security, discuss the outcome of the evaluation and implications of the recommendations, and develop proposals of policy options to be costed (link to agendas and presentations).

To ensure broad-based and active participation in the national dialogue process, the ILO collaborated with the Civil Society Platform for Social Protection (CSP) to prepare their. This process led to the development of a Civil Society Position Document on the evaluation and revision of the ENSSB, which clearly outlines their demands. The main points of the position paper of the Civil Society Platform for Social Protection were:

• The need for increased budget allocations to the basic social protection sector in order to ensure that INAS programs are able to meet the ambitious targets outlined in the National Development Plan for 2035;
• The progressive extension of basic social security through new programmatic options, specifically:  a universal old-age pension, a universal disability subsidy and a maternity cash transfer (in order to address malnutrition among children and pregnant women);
• Improvement in the delivery of services, including the identification of beneficiaries, case management, payments and grievance procedures, by placing at least one INAS delegate in every district, replacing in-kind social transfers with cash transfers, and collaborating with civil society organizations when necessary;
• Simple and easily comprehensible eligibility criteria, that aspire towards universality;
• Stronger accountability to civil society organizations, by publishing budget allocations per delegations.

Based on a participatory dialogue processe, the following programmatic proposals were developed for the ENSSB 2015-2019 and costed (link to costing document in Portuguese, .ppt slides in English), taking into account a gradual expansion plan of 10 years:

• A quasi-universal cash transfer for the elderly, people with disabilities and people with degenerative diseases
• A quasi-universal cash transfer for pregnant women and infant children between the ages of 0-2
• A cash transfer for child headed households and a foster grant
• A cash transfer for able-bodied adults through a public works programme